On Assault, and Why Your "Safety Tips For Women" Aren't Helping

There has been a lot of attention recently on rape, and assault, and what women can do to help keep themselves safe. Posts get shared on social media that claim to be tips gleaned from talking to convicted rapists (with no sources or citations, of course) about what they looked for in a victim. The top tip on one such post is that rapists look for long hair or a ponytail. The top tip is telling women how they should style their hair. Yesterday enough was enough and I flipped out over one such post, and I'd like to have the opportunity to explain, in full, why posts like those are not helpful and why I had such a strong emotional reaction to the post in question.

First things first, such tips are always written as ways women can avoid being raped by a stranger when outside the home. This normalises the idea that rape always means a stranger in an alley. When everyone is encouraged to believe that "rape" equates to "stranger in an alley" this makes it less believable when you report a different experience. It means that juries, police, your community and so on are less willing to accept that anything other than "dark alley rape" really was a rape. According to the National Health and Social Life Survey of 2011, conducted in the USA, stranger rape only accounts for 4% of rape. Rape Crisis UK highlight that only 9% of rapes are committed by strangers, and furthermore: 


          [...] that 28% of women who are victims of the most serious sexual offences never tell anyone about it,
          and we know from our experience within the Rape Crisis movement that only around 15% of women
          and girls who experience sexual violence ever report to the police.

          One reason women and girls tell us they are reluctant to talk about their experiences is a fear of not
          being believed, or of being blamed for what has happened to them, as well as feelings of shame or
          self-blame. (Source)


Reinforcing the concept that rape = stranger-in-alley just makes the situation worse for the victims of assault. It helps to reinforce the idea that anything else isn't "really" rape. There's also the dark potential that this public perception of rape might support abusers in their belief that what they're doing isn't rape at all. "I'm not a stranger in an alley, so therefore this isn't a rape". To refer again to Rape Crisis:


          Myth Men who rape or sexually assault are mentally ill or monsters.
          Fact Studies have indicated that as few as 5% of men are psychotic at the time of their crimes. Few
          convicted rapists are referred for psychiatric treatment. (Source - and yes, this refers to men only, but
                                                                                              women rape too.)

Rapists aren't monsters or "psychos"; they're people, who might want to abuse their power over someone, or feel they have power by committing a rape, or think that they're not raping at all. There are many and varied reasons why people rape and being mentally ill only counts for a tiny percentage of that.

Another problem is that these posts and messages are always aimed at women. The figures from the States report that 1 in 10 rape victims is male. In the UK in 2011, there were 69,000 female rape victims and 9,000 male rape victims. (Some sources for the cold hard statistical figures can be found here and also on this site for UK figures. For a comprehensive list of UK crime reports, visit Rape Crisis.) Men get raped too; sometimes by other men, sometimes by women. And yes, "dark alley rape" does sometimes occur - 4-9% of rapes are committed by strangers. So, if these posts are really aimed at making people safer, why aren't they written for men as well as women? Why are they gendered at all? Why is it only women who are told to modify their behaviour? Why is it only women who are taught to live in fear, change their clothes, follow certain rules, encouraged to view every man on the street as a potential rapist? Why not write these for men as well, if the intention is really to help keep us all safe?

These messages carry the implication that if you follow these rules, do X, avoid Y, you'll be safe from sexual assault. But that's a myth. Most rapists (about 85% in fact) are known to the victim. It's a friend, a relative, a date, a partner. Not wearing your hair in a ponytail won't stop your abusive spouse from raping you. There is the insidious implication that if/when you get sexually assaulted, it's your fault because you weren't careful enough. You didn't follow the rules. You were asking for it. It contributes to a culture of victim-blaming. As this post shows, rape carries way more victim-blame than robbery and also states that, by definition, rape is not under the victim's control. These "safety tips" suggest that there are things you can and should do to avoid being raped, ergo if you get raped it's due to a failing on your part. (Also please, please read this glorious post on how these Safety Tips For Women! are patronising at best, damaging at worst.)

My final issue with posts on how women should "keep themselves safe" is that they normalise the idea that only women get raped. I can barely even guess how awful that must be for the victims of rape and sexual assault who are not cis female. My best guess is that this must make the situation all the worse for them; how emasculating it must be for some, how it adds to the trauma for others, how it reduces the sympathy some might otherwise have received, how hard it must be to convince friends, relatives, the authorities, that what happened to you was really rape. It must make it easier for women and persons known to the victim to get away with rape, too, as all the focus is on strange male perpetrators.

When people (men and women) get defensive about these "safety tip" posts, these messages, these attitudes, it makes it even worse. You find yourself apologising for the fact you were so sickened by something that you had to speak out. You find yourself less willing to speak out in future - which further contributes to the rape culture we live in. And we do live in a rape culture. Of the estimated 60,000 to 95,000 rapes in England and Wales, only 15,670 became police recorded crimes and of those a minuscule 1,070 persons were convicted of rape (again see here). That's not even 10% of the lowest estimate. Hell, that's not even 10% of the recorded crimes. A conviction rate of less than 10%. What a strong, clear message that sends to abusers and rapists - that it's okay to rape, you'll get away with it. Women are objects, assault us all you want, and if we try to report it you probably won't be charged with anything, because, well, we weren't careful enough to avoid a rape, were we? We didn't follow your tips. We were asking for it. And if you do get convicted, don't worry! The media will probably be on your side anyway (see the hideous and awful reporting on the Steubenville rape case). 

If there's a half-naked character in film, TV, a comic, a game, chances are that character is cis female. If there's a character with a back-story of rape and abuse, chances are that character is cis female. We encourage sayings like "look at the tits on that", like women aren't even people, aren't even human. Men in bars and clubs and on trains and in the street seem to think it's okay to grab our breasts, our bottoms, to yell graphic sexual slurs and suggestions. Whilst everyone gets abuse on the internet, women get threats of rape and sexual assault thrown in for good measure. Women in posters and adverts are shown in objectified ways so frequently that viewers now see women in lingerie as actual objects whilst the same isn't true for men in underwear (two scientific studies found this, shown here). 

I don't even want to get started on how many magazine articles and radio shows focus on stories of men who were falsely accused of rape. It breaks my heart and sends my blood pressure sky-rocketing to think that, of the less than 10% of convictions for rape, the media want us to focus on the stories of false accusation. Although I'm sure false accusations do happen, it is nearly impossible to accurately judge the percentage of false accusations and emphasising such cases is damaging to all victims of sexual assault who try to speak out. It further pushes the perception that "dark alley rape" is the only "real" rape and that if you know your attacker well enough to name them then they can't "really" be a rapist at all.

I know you mean well. I know you're trying to help, that the thinking is "if even one women is saved from rape by a stranger, then surely that's a good thing". But at best, your tips are only relevant in 4-9% of cases. At best, you're helping around 7020 people reduce the chances of their being raped and making 70,980 people feel they were to blame for their attack or that their rape wasn't a rape at all. At worst, you're making it harder for 70,980 people to bring their attacker to justice or even be believed by their own community. Instead of teaching women they need to conform to set rules or be punished, why don't we put all this effort and focus into changing our rape culture? Why don't we ask the police to change their behaviour, to take all reports of assault seriously? Why don't we argue that what a victim was wearing and what their sexual history is has no bearing and no relevance in a report of rape or sexual assault? Why don't we teach that groping a stranger, coercing a reluctant partner, having sexual contact with someone too drunk or high to resist counts as rape? 

You may argue that it's pointless trying to teach rapists not to rape - but you're wrong. Read a little something about how rape prevention messages aimed at men actually work. As Zerlina Maxwell so brilliantly said on Fox News:

       “I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t
        want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you
        to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. … I think we should be telling men not to
        rape women and start the conversation there with prevention.” (Video and transcript here)

You may want to argue we don't live in a rape culture, that rape will be a threat regardless of how our society works. But consider this: 

          “Rape-free societies were characterized by sexual equality in which both genders shared power
           and were deemed to make important contributions, albeit in different ways, to the welfare of the
           society” (Rathus, Nevid, and Fichner-Rathus, 573).
           - “The more egalitarian and integrated the society, the less rape” (Schwartz and Rutter, 69).

If social pressures and social attitudes had no bearing, then rape statistics would be consistent across different societies and would be the same for different economic and racial groups. But they aren't. We need to take the focus off the victims and put it on the the attackers and the police and the judges and the juries. We need to stop telling women to live in fear and start telling society that rape is not okay.

Yes, it's smart to take precautions in life - lock your front door, keep valuables out of sight in your car, don't walk alone in dangerous parts of town - but no, we shouldn't be telling women, and women alone, that they need to go as far as changing their damn hairstyle in order to try to avoid being victims of rape. Because again, to drive the point home. These tips are no guarantee of protection from "dark alley rape". These tips are useless for avoiding most situations where sexual assault is likely to occur. And sharing these tips encourages a community that believes victims of rape deserve it because they weren't careful enough.

You do not deserve to be raped.

It is not your fault if you are raped or assaulted.

Only the rapist can be blamed for your rape.

We can teach rapists not to rape, and it makes a positive difference.

That's the message I wish we shared on social media. That's the message we should be sending out. That's the change I want us to start making.

Cheesed Off

I've written a guest post for my friend's award-winning blog, Cardiff Bites. Read it here!


...And then join the debate on Twitter.

The Trouble with Being Human

No, not in a deep, existential kind of way – I mean, as a review of problems I have with the BBC Three series Being Human. For the uninitiated, it’s a comedy-drama about a house-share of twenty-somethings, who happen to be a vampire, a couple of werewolves and a ghost.

There are many, many spoilers up to episode 6 of series 3 in this blog, so if you don’t want to know what happens look away now.

If you do want to read this but haven’t been following the show, check out the episode guides.

Still with me? Good.

I watched the pilot of this show about four years ago, joined in the internet campaign to get it picked up as a series, and was suitably delighted when it was chosen to air on BBC Three. I’ve been a fan since day one, in other words, and although I’m still watching now it’s in its third series, I have to say – my love is faltering. There are just some serious, gaping flaws with the script and the show as a whole this series that I can’t ignore.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never had the kind of slavish devotion to it that’s meant I haven’t had problems before: the nature of ghosts and vampires and blood being two major issues for me.

Annie the ghost is a particular bugbear and has been from the beginning. It’s her physicality that bothers me. Annie can make tea; move things around; in the first series non-supernaturals could see her; she walks places most of the time instead of popping in and out; there are never any fancy fade-in/out “ghostly” special effects*… There is no way of actually telling the character is a ghost unless she a) mentions it, or b) does one of the very rare sudden appearances. Hell, in the first series there was an episode in which Annie was out in the rain, with her hood up and hair wet** and all I could think was, seriously? A ghost is being affected by the real-world elements? It stretched credulity a bit far – and my credulity is elastic enough for me to enjoy watching True Blood, just to give that some perspective.

This series, though, it’s even worse. Annie’s able to touch, hug and kiss people; her outfit keeps changing (in small ways, yes, but surely the point of ghosts is they don’t change?!); and she not only makes tea but she was able to help a zombie (I’ll get to that later) get dressed and style her hair and make-up. In short, apart from no humans being able to see her, Annie’s pretty much a ghost in name only now. This frustrates me – but it is pretty internally consistent.

The creator, Toby Whitehouse, said during series 1:
“Regarding her clothes, we wanted to show how her death has, in a way, frozen her in time. And keeping her in the same clothes (although you'll notice how they change slightly, depending on her mood) as that was a good visual way of expressing that. I always imagined her like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, still in her wedding dress from decades before. Annie is trapped, she can't move on, she can't complete her journey. Everything about her, including her clothes, is stuck.” - Source

So how do we go from having Annie “stuck” wearing the same clothes, then having them change much more significantly in the third series? Is it supposed to represent how, having crossed over and come back, she’s not “trapped” or “stuck” to the same extent she was before..?

Then there’s Mitchell. Ahh, Mitchell.

He’s the vampire of the set. The rules for vampires in the Being Human world are:
a) They can’t be seen in things which involve silver, so no mirrors, no showing up on CCTV, and they can’t be seen in photos or on camera;
b) They’re immortal and don’t age beyond the day they were “recruited”;
c) They don’t appear to have any extraordinary strength, but do have a heightened sense of smell – at least, they can smell if someone’s a werewolf or not;
d) Sunlight bothers them – they prefer to avoid it, but they don’t catch fire or anything dramatic;
e) They have fangs, which appear when they want to feed – their eyes also turn solid black at this point, which is a neat and creepy effect;
And f) the blood has to be straight from the vein, bagged blood doesn’t work to satisfy their hunger.

Now, the urge for blood in vampires is played in this series as more of an addiction; vampires get lost in their thirst, get withdrawal symptoms when they stop feeding, the usual. As Whitehouse describes it:
“The analogy we use for blood in Being Human is drugs. We're saying the hunger […] for blood is psychological. Mitchell will discuss it further in ep 6 [of series 1], but essentially the craving is something he could in theory overcome. I always thought this was an interesting way of approaching it, as it meant Mitchell could renounce blood without starving to death, but it allowed enough struggle to make the battle interesting.” – Source

This actually works pretty well – except for one detail that’s always bothered me. Our Mitchell is “on the wagon” and, apart from a few plot-significant slip-ups, he’s not drinking human blood. Okay so far. What I think has never worked is the fact that, once the initial “withdrawal” period is over, there appear to be no physical effects whatsoever on the abstaining vampire. So, we’ve got a type of vampire that’s supernatural enough to be immortal, doesn’t age, and can’t be seen in mirrors – why wouldn’t there be more to the whole blood-drinking thing than just the desire? If it were me writing this show, I would’ve had vampires as slightly-more-than-human strong and fast; and when a vampire stops drinking blood this speed and strength stops as well, whilst the vampire also starts ageing again. For me, it should be the blood that keeps them immortal, helps them heal and gives them the edge over humans; take this away and the abilities should go too. I would also make vampires more sensitive to sunlight if they stop feeding on humans, as they’re less strong and less resilient over all due to the consequences of stopping feeding. Having zero changes just seems like a cheat to me somehow, always has.

Moving on to the third series and the vampire/blood thing has suddenly become pretty inconsistent. In episode two we meet Adam, the teenaged-vampire.

As an aside the casting was just awful here: no offence to the chap personally, but Craig Roberts’ acting is …. not good. He had zero timing, was apparently unable to emote either vocally or physically and overall his performance just grated. Then there were Mark Lewis Jones and Melanie Walters. They were clearly hamming it up and whilst I’m sure this was a very enjoyable time for them, their over-the-top, scenery-chewing style made the episode feel like a bad joke. In terms of the characters, Adam was so lightly done, an absolute non-event. He’s meant to be in his forties, forever trapped in the body of a teenager, and yet the best way this complexity could best be demonstrated through the show, apparently, was to have Adam say to George “you’re just a kid”. Wow. Great writing there, huh?

Now, go and watch Interview with the Vampire. See Kirsten Dunst’s performance***? See how excellent that was? Makes you really appreciate the frustration of an adult mind in a childish body and the way this frustration changes to rage and warps the personality, doesn’t it? Now compare it to the character of Adam. Clearly the writers of Being Human thought, “Cool, we’ll have a teen vampire and give him an on-line spin-off show in a school to tap into the Skins market and it’ll be awesome! What’s that? Character development and considering the effects of a developing mind trapped in a teenaged body, you say? Naah, we’ll just have him obsessed with tits and sex and stuff and it’ll be hilarious. Yeah!” The character of Adam felt utterly trite and the episode as a whole felt infantile as a result.

Back to the blood thing. Adam’s been feeding on his parents for his whole existence as a vampire – but his mum has already died and in the course of the episode his father dies, leaving Adam without guidance and without a food supply. Annie, George and Nina take him in to try to help him; Adam starts going through withdrawal; the gang ask Mitchell what to do and Mitchell tells them, in no uncertain terms, that Adam needs to feed. Needs to. Mitchell also refuses to help and won’t have him in the house as he can’t have another “addict” around mucking up his own recovery – which is an epically jerk move, because after all Mitchell had help from another vampire with getting “clean” and in the first series he tries to help Lauren, the girl he made into a vampire. So apparently the message here is, Mitchell’s not interested in giving someone a hand unless they’re sexually attractive to him.

The episode meanders on, with everyone and his dog insisting that Adam needs to drink blood or there will be consequences; yet once Adam chooses not to live with other vampires and instead to try and stay “clean”, he’s apparently fine. Uhh, what? What happened to the withdrawal symptoms? If it’s as easy as that, what does that imply about Mitchell’s difficulty with staying off blood? Why was the lack of blood making Adam weak and sick one minute, then he’s fine the next? Where is the damned sense?! Anyway, by the end of the episode Adam’s sodding off to internet spin-off land and we don’t need to trouble ourselves with him again.

Back to Mitchell.


Last series, for reasons to do with vengeance against all humanity in ways that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time and make even less sense now I come to reconsider them but hey, it looked cool and added drama, Mitchell was involved in the killing of an entire train carriage of people****. This is a heavy influence on the plot of series 3; Mitchell ended up meeting a fan (we’ll get to that later, too) who had a book full of press clippings to do with this multiple murder. Mitchell ended up killing fanboy – and, for some baffling reason, kept the Big Book of Incriminating Evidence and hid it in the house he shares with Annie, George and Nina.

So, to review, a vampire living with people who know he is a vampire is hiding a book full of clippings that refer to a very bloody mass homicide and keeps sneaking up to the attic, when his housemates can hear him going there, to look at the book on a pretty regular basis. Now in your common-or-garden household, finding out your housemate had a book of cuttings to do with a grisly and violent murder would be creepy enough. If, however, your housemate is a vampire, and you know this for a fact, then is it just me or is that pretty much a flashing neon sign saying “I did this! Me! It was me!!”..? Naturally enough, this book is found and used against Mitchell by Herrick (yep, I’ll get to him, too), his enemy from series 1 who happens to be currently crazy and living in their attic, in a kind of upside-down version of the time Spike was nuts and living in the school basement. Herrick gives this book to Nina, who now hates Mitchell for some reason. Nina makes the obvious connection and calls the police, leaving an anonymous message on the train-massacre hotline. A police officer turns up to investigate the tip (do they really send police officers to investigate every anonymous tip they get on these hotlines?) and comes inside to chat to Mitchell. Whilst there, the officer runs into Herrick upstairs; Herrick shows the investigating officer the book; the officer tries to take it and is caught by Mitchell, who takes it back. Whilst having such a book is not illegal, it is pretty damn suspicious.

So, why would someone who’s lasted more than a century as a vampire be stupid enough to leave evidence like that around?! Mitchell finally gets around to burning it after the police officer has seen it – which, really, just makes it all the more dubious. I mean, you tell the suspicious police officer that there’s no crime in having the book of cuttings, then you dispose of the evidence as soon as she’s gone…It doesn’t add up to “innocent”, really, does it?

Now. The zombie.

At the end of series 2, Annie goes to purgatory – at the start of series 3, Mitchell manages to get there and get her back. It was pretty well done and a nice dramatic touch, but I have an issue with that, too: namely, that Annie is being essentially tortured and is suffering. She wasn’t a bad person, she’s done nothing especially wrong, and yet it seems like she’s being punished and will be sent to hell. Then, at the end of the episode Annie is told that she was in the “wrong” purgatory for her: as she went through someone else’s door, she ended up in someone else’s afterlife. Okay, that makes sense. However, when Mitchell goes through someone else’s door in order to get into the afterlife to find Annie, he ends up in his purgatory. So how does that work? Unless we’re meant to interpret it as those in the afterlife wanted to make Annie suffer so she’d ask her friends for help and so Mitchell would come to find her and they could give him the message/threat about him being killed by a werewolf. Except, as we saw in series 1 and 2, those in the afterlife can communicate with those in the living world through televisions and radios. So there’s no obvious reason to gamble on the fact Mitchell might risk the afterlife to try and get Annie back. It’s just senseless.

Anyhoo, Mitchell gets Annie back and they both cross over into the living world again. In episode 3 we meet the “zombie”: one of a few people who died at the time Annie and Mitchell were leaving the afterlife. Apparently, as Annie and Mitchell were crossing back it’s supposed to have blocked the souls of the dead from moving on, which somehow made them zombies (except they don’t want brains and still have their living personality, but their bodies are rotting). This is seriously problematic: hundreds if not thousands of people must have died at the same time; why is it that only a small handful in Barry ended up becoming zombies? If it’s a proximity thing that makes a kind of sense – Mitchell crossed over in the hospital. However, suggesting that the “other side” is tied to physical locations with such precision seems…odd. Like obvious lazy storytelling.

Then we hit one of this series’ hallmarks: wild inconsistencies. When we first see Sasha, the zombie, her speech is slurred and so bad that she can barely be understood – I think we’re meant to laugh at this, because it turns out she was drunk (how?) and her diction is fine once she’s sober in the morning. But we’re not talking drunk-slurred, we’re talking full-on, near-incomprehensible, has-to-use-gestures-as-well-as-words-to-be-understood, mouth-rotting type of speech. The difference is too exaggerated – to be fair, that could be down to yet another terrible actor, it’s hard to tell. Either way, although I’m guessing the intention was to play with people’s expectations of a zombie and to reveal “ha ha, just kidding, she was drunk all along”, it doesn’t really work.

There’s also the issue of the other people who became zombies, who were experimented on (read “tortured”) until they were eventually burned.
By hospital workers.
In the UK.
Last time I checked, we weren’t actually living in Hitler’s Fascist Fun-Time Playhouse and, should people come back from the dead, torturing a screaming, pleading person to the point of breakdown is probably not what your average surgeon or nurse would do. Just sayin’. They probably weed those types out in the interview process.

The plot gets worse when Annie decides to take Sasha on a girls’ night out with her and Nina. I know that Sasha’s “make-over” appearance is supposed to be bad, but it isn’t funny it just feels like an over-played hand; and there’s no way in hell someone looking like that could walk down the street and get into a club without comment. Sasha then has a snog with some guy; he’s kissing her for a bet because she looks such a mess. However, there’s bets, and then there’s someone looking and smelling like the rotting corpse they are. I just don’t buy her on a night out without people screaming and calling an ambulance, possibly the army.

Sasha’s body then gets rotten enough that she can’t walk around anymore and eventually her door appears and she can cross over. But how does a zombie, which is already dead, “die” enough for the door to appear? Why would her body just go all at once and start breaking? Shouldn’t pieces have started dropping off her first? Again, lack of sense. I’m guessing that the writers just thought it would be fun to play with common expectations of a zombie and couldn’t be bothered putting in the donkey-work of actually writing a script that made sense in the rules of their universe.

Speaking of which: Herrick. At the end of series 1, George, in wolf form, ends up tearing Herrick apart, thus killing him. At the end of series 2 we see two vampires, one of whom Herrick recruited, using their blood to resurrect Herrick. Which is just…yeah. I mean for a start, physically how?! His body was torn to pieces and probably a bit eaten by a werewolf. What’s left to resurrect?! One of the original motifs of this show was that it was a bit more “real”: it wasn’t your True Blood with vampires with super-speed and super-strength, burning in sunlight and able to fly if they were powerful enough; it wasn’t like Buffy, with demons and gods and monsters-of-the-week; the creator, Toby Whitehouse, wanted a show that was closer to physics as we know it. Toby said, “One thing I've always insisted on with this show is that it's taking place in our world.” - Source
The resurrection of Herrick was the first sign of this ethos completely derailing, and the use of zombies pushed it over the edge.

So now Herrick’s back and living in the same house as the protagonists and has amnesia for some reason and is refusing to drink blood. He is still pretty evil, though, and saying really close-to-the-mark things as well as having the sense to show the Big Book of Murder Victims to Nina, so you have to wonder if he’s faking the amnesia. As Mitchell says that even Herrick would’ve slipped up and shown a crack in the façade if he was faking it, though, I honestly don’t know if it’s just sloppy writing; if it’s meant to show that Herrick has always been a nasty piece of work and the vampire thing is just incidental; or if it’s intended as Herrick just being that good at faking it and manipulating people.

Sticking with the vampires for one last point, there’s Graham. A total fanboy who shows up dressed as Mitchell (how did he know what Mitchell would be wearing that day? Mitch has a style, sure, but it’s not like he’s Batman with one set outfit), he says he’s visiting all the big-name vamps and Mitchell is on his list. Basically, it’s uncomfortably derivative of that so-so episode of Supernatural where Sam and Dean find themselves at a Supernatural convention.






Graham’s entire character seems to have been drafted in about five minutes and his script written by drunks who just wanted to wrap things up and get back to the pub. His apparent entire raison d’etre in terms of the show was to provide the plot-prop Big Book of Incriminating Evidence, so Mitchell could keep it and have it used against him by Herrick. Again, lazy, lazy storytelling.

Now for George. In episode 6, Mitchell is obsessively flicking through a paper for mentions of the train massacre – maybe he wants to replace the book of cuttings he burned, who knows. Annie catches him and thinks he’s freaked out because he’s found a death notice for George Sands Senior, our George’s father.

Wait, what? Local papers only carry notices for local deaths. As George ran away from his family to hide the fact he’s a werewolf, why is he living in the same area as his family? In the pilot episode, George runs into his ex-fiancé at the hospital where he works in Bristol. The location just seems jarring – despite reading about his father’s death just that morning, George has enough time to get dressed and make the funeral, so his family have to be living close to Barry.

Is it just me, or if you were trying to hide from your loved ones would you not move just a little bit further away than the same freaking town?! That also undermines why George was in Bristol – just the other side of the Bristol Channel doesn’t seem far enough away for George to have fled in the first instance.

It gets worse. From the moment we first meet George and Mitchell they have a clear bond that’s got a foundation in months if not years of friendship. There’s trust and mutual reliance there, that needs to have been built up over time.

Yet now characters are saying that George has been a werewolf for three years and ran away from his family three years ago. So with the show being in its third year, surely that means George would’ve become a werewolf shortly before the timeline of the pilot episode – so when did he and Mitchell find time to become such good buddies? The timing just seems off to me.

Then we have George’s dad, who it seems is a ghost – but it later turns out that he’d actually faked his death and was still alive. It’s a telling indicator of how ghosts are represented in this series, that you cannot tell if someone is alive or dead unless they let you know themselves. Shoddy, shoddy writing. By the end of the episode, George Senior is back with George’s mum, who was dating an absolute prick of a man for no discernable reason but left him when George Senior punched him. Because that’s what we all want, right ladies? A man who punches his way out of trouble. Also, despite faking his death and lying to officials in a way that involved a police officer, there are no legal ramifications for George Senior admitting he’s actually still alive. Presumably Prick Guy, despite having all the motive in the world, isn’t going to turn them in and no one gets in trouble.

Also they presume George Junior left because he developed a mental illness, which is actually well done and really worked in the context of the show.

Now, to be fair episode 7 was amazing and fantastic viewing. It’s pretty clear the writers had some great ideas for the series, but they’ve got padded out with loads of filler. Overall, I am not impressed with this series. Bad form, Being Human. Bad form.

*Yes, I know this will have been influenced by the budget, but still.

**Budget again, right?

***Yeah, I wonder why she stopped bothering to act, too.

****One carriage, that’s right. No, I’ve never seen a train with just one carriage, either.

ADDENDUM:

Following the (brilliant) finale, I have a couple further points. Now I loved the finale and yes, I cried; but I still have to take issue with it. Or more precisely, the hook they put in for series 4 (which has been given the go-ahead). If you haven't seen the finale and don't want me to ruin an element of it for you, stop reading.

For those of you still with me, my problem is thus:
We're introduced to Wyndham (played by an actor you may remember from an episode of Spaced - clever boy) who is 1,000 years old and clearly someone to be reckoned with - Mitchell's terrified of him and Wyndham certainly talks the talk. He outlines his plan for vampire world-domination and George tells him, "You've got a fight on your hands". It makes for a great ending and a strong visual, nicely staged. However, I can't help but think, if Wyndham is 1,000 years old, able to enter a house without invitation, issues threats about crucifying people that fellow vampires seem assured he can deliver on - then you know what should happen immediately after George issues this threat? Let me tell you how it should go.

Wyndham should casually step forward, rip out George's heart, do something to banish or confine Annie, then call his heavies in so they can all cart Nina off. Wyndham expressed an interest in what, exactly, the off-spring of two werewolves would turn out to be, so it makes sense for him to take her and keep her alive until after the birth. The others he'd kill.

I mean seriously, now, a 1,000 year old vampire and he's going to be threatened by a werewolf in his twenties?! As if! Wyndham shouldn't be issuing threats or anything, either - why leave your enemies alive to plot against you?

Alas, I know this isn't how series 4 will play out. Instead, Wyndham will make dire warnings, give visceral descriptions of the things he could do, but isn't actually doing, and then leave, setting up the series for the housemates planning how to deal with the increasing threat from vampires. ARGH. This is such a repeated motif in movies/books/television shows dealing with vampires - they didn't get to a great age by pussy-footing around their enemies, they got there by killing people. Lots of people. In really nasty ways.

Man up, BBC Three. I say, open series 4 with the brutal murder of George, then have the remaining episodes dealing with Annie trying to find a way to rescue Nina from the vampires before Nina gives birth. That, my friends, would be great and original drama. Call me, Whitehouse. We can script this.

Girls & Boys

This is a subject that's always been near and dear to my heart, but following recent reads, recent blogs of mine and recent discussions, it's very much at the forefront of my mind.

I do not believe there is any real, significant, fundamental difference between girls and boys based on their gender.

Let me elaborate: I've been an owner of animals since I got my first cat aged four; I've had pets of both sexes and been around animals of different sexes pretty much all my life, and I can state with confidence that I have never noticed any significant difference in personality (and believe me, animals have their own personality, but that's a blog for another day) based on their gender. Sure, male dogs with hump things, male peacocks will flash their colourful tails, male cats spray their territory while females physically cannot...I don't deny their are clear differences physically between the genders, and I am sure that these physical differences can have an impact on behaviour - the influence of hormones is not something I am inclined to argue against.

However, when it comes to personality traits like having a temper, liking this or that, being kind, having a gentle nature, wanting things clean, preferring things messy - I'm pretty sure it's bollocks to say this is in any way related to gender (beyond social influences, which I'll get to) and to state that "men and women are different" is reductive and insulting. To both sexes.

I love violent video games and paintballing and the toy I wanted most as a kid was Scalextric (and one day I will damned well own one); I like playing Grand Theft Auto and taking the stolen pixilated cars on a rampage through the make-believe city; I mostly wear trousers and trainers and I'm partial to a pint in the pub while watching football or rugby on the big screen.

I also enjoy horse-riding, like wearing make-up, enjoy baking and cooking, melt into a puddle of gooey emotion around cats, especially kittens, cry like a baby when someone dies in a film (yep, I even cry at Titanic, god help me) and dream of owning an Alessi-stocked kitchen.

I don't like any of these things because I'm a girl. I like them because I'm me, the product of my DNA, my family background, and the people I choose to be friends with. A combination of nature and nurture, in which I'm sure having double-X chromosomes does play a part - but that double-X doesn't tell the whole story, and frankly presuming it does is an insult to me.

If I said, "Bill likes x because he's gay", that would be homophobic. If I said, "Kate likes x because she's black", that would be racist.

So why isn't it sexist, and therefore just as offensive, to say "Julie likes x because she's a girl"? Why isn't sexism socially perceived to be just as bad as racism or homophobia?

Yes, society plays a huge part in how we turn out, and currently, most of Western society seems to think that people will behave in certain set ways based on their gender: boys like blue and football and astronauts; girls like pink and ponies and fairies (with pink fairy ponies obviously being the zenith of female desire). Yet by presuming that girls and boys are fundamentally different, we're perpetuating this misconception and taking an active part in continuing to support this fantasy gender-division.

If everyone around you expects you to like pink and hate football because you're a girl, then there is enormous peer pressure on you to conform, to live up to expectations; it's a rare person who is strong enough to defy expectations, especially when you're a teenager. If your family, friends, role-models, TV and film characters, people in magazines and characters in books are all sending the same message ("You're a girl so you like x and hate y; you're a boy so you like y and hate x") then it begins to be seen as "normal"; and if you're not "normal", you're different; and different is bad.

What this attitude fails to take into account is everyone's own, individual, idiosyncratic personality. Kate likes x because she's Kate, not because she's gay/straight, female/male, Caucasian/Asian etc. Sure, ethnicity, race, religion, gender and sexuality all play a part in making you, you, but each individual aspect doesn't tell the whole story, and to say otherwise is, frankly, both old-fashioned and reductive, not to mention pretty offensive.

I often feel like I'm taking crazy pills when this issue comes up: most people think that there's true gender equality in British society at the moment (there isn't) so what am I getting so riled up about; or they'll take offence that I am "insulting" them by presuming they are furthering the gender gap through their own actions and/or opinions; or they'll turn the issue into a joke, which is offensive to me in and of itself, as their facetious attitude implies my opinions are invalid and the issues at hand comical; or they'll just think I'm wrong, that there is a real difference between boys and girls, and to say otherwise makes me stupid (the patronising bastards).

I'm not the only one to feel this way; but sometimes it sure as hell can feel like it. The worst thing is when this issue arises with someone I'm close to, and I suddenly realise that not only am I talking to a sexist; but I'm talking to a sexist who thinks I am in the wrong for challenging their beliefs on the gender divide.

What I also find very personally upsetting and distressing is the results of this socially-created gender divide: there's still a huge pay gap; it's presumed women will do the majority of the work raising children; women are seen to be the ones who should do the cooking and cleaning; women have to battle against preconceived, often contrary, notions of how they should behave in the workplace; women can have difficulty getting, or keeping, the same jobs as men; and most distressingly of all, women are much more likely to be perceived as sex-objects and therefore are more likely to be subject to sexual attack, either verbally, physically, or both.

Violence against women is a huge issue, and not one I'm going to get into here; pertinent information can be found at sites like End Violence Against Women and Womankind Worldwide.

What I will say is that, from my own personal experience, I have experienced sexual abuse because I'm female. I've been returning from the bar in a pub, hands full of drinks for me and my friends, and had a man grope my breasts and laugh at the shock on my face; I've been returning home on the train after a day's work and had my backside and breasts groped by strangers because they're drunk, returning from the football/rugby and felt entitled to do that to me; I've had offensive terms yelled at me in the street, and believe me I'm hardly dressed as or looking like "Page Three" material at the time, and I've worked in places where men have made sexist jokes, followed me around the warehouse floor so they can stare at me while I work, and speculated about my sex-life.

I find it hard to separate these issues in my mind: if you think men and women are fundamentally different, then you probably think one sex is better than the other; if you think one sex is better than the other, then you think one sex has the right to discriminate against the other; and if you think one sex has the right to discriminate against the other, you probably think one sex has the right to verbally and/or physically abuse the other - "look at the way she was dressed, she was asking for it"; "she came home with me, she was asking for it"; "she passed out drunk in public, she was asking for it". And no, I don't think sexual abuse is committed by men against women, but statistically that is what mostly happens.

Maybe I am prejudiced for making these associations, for thinking that because someone acknowledges and either plays along with, or panders to, these largely false gender divisions, they might end up discriminating against me, or another woman. But that's my problem - and to be honest, I'm yet to be convinced that I am wrong to make that association.

I don't think that just because someone I'm close to displays an old-fashioned or sexist attitude, they will end up committing sexual violence against me; but I do think their attitude contributes to perpetuating sexual discrimination which could lead other men to commit sexual violence. Perhaps that's reductive of me; but it's still what I fear is the consequence of their attitude.

So, is it just me, or is any one else railing against the prejudice around them and determined to try and change things for the future...?

Lacking a Y-Chromosome Doesn't Mean Lacking Intelligence

As as been amply demonstrated there's lots of things in this world that make me choke with rage. One of them is sexism. There's still a huge, bloody awful gap between the sexes, and yet the prevailing attitude seems to be that women are apparently equal with men now, and so we should just shut up and be grateful we're allowed to vote. "Feminism" is a negative word; you call someone a feminist and you're implying they're a man-hating lesbian bull-dyke; a bra-burning Germaine Greer 60s throwback; or Jo Brand. Yep, the male agenda has even taken the term "feminism" away from women and turned it from a positive statement about the right to be treated equally, and transformed it into a huge negative.

For varied and complex reasons, that are largely social, women earn an average of almost a third less through their working lives than men do (as written about here and here, as the tip of the evidence iceberg) . Baby changing facilities are in women's toilets; statutory maternity leave is 52 weeks, 39 of those paid, whilst statutory paternity leave is 2 weeks. Pretty much everything in general British culture, from statutory leave down to those fucking "mum's gone to Iceland" ads that make me scream at the TV (Why has mum gone? Why not ever one of the rest of the family? Are they somehow incapacitated? Why is it her job? What happens in families where there isn't a female care-giver present, do they just fucking starve?!) is geared towards training girls up to be mothers and housewives. "Female" toys are dolls and push-chairs and mini-kitchens and toy irons (Toy. Irons. WTF?!!) while "male" toys are guns and cars (i.e., the really fun stuff). And this is five decades after the feminist movement.

What made me snap about this recently was seeing a book entitled Things For Boys to Make and Do. This is a kids' activity book that has things like how to draw a spooky castle and how to make monster hand gloves. All well and good - but why, I ask you, is this for boys only? There is nothing inherent within these tasks that make them essentially male; it's all just social conditioning. And it drives me crazy. I know men who aren't into sports and women who are; women who aren't into fashion and men who are; women who hate pink and men that don't like blue.... You get the picture. Publishing books and pushing these socio-sexual divisions on young, impressionable kids just makes it worse and encourages yet another generation to grow up believing that men and women may as well come from different planets.

There is a literacy gap between males and females; girls read more and girls tend to do better at school (which we are being punished for, essentially: when boys did better at school it wasn't an issue, nothing was said, there was zero effort made to bridge the learning gap between the sexes; but when the tables are turned suddenly it's a big issue, it's a "problem" and boys have to be given help and the whole fucking educational system has to be changed in order to accommodate male needs. Newsflash, fellas, you're already more likely to get a job, keep a job and earn more in that job than we lowly females are - so maybe you could just let us do well in school and leave it alone?!). However, I don't think "targeting" books for boys is the answer - things like the Dangerous Book for Boys just make the gap between the sexes wider, it doesn't encourage boys to read. Why can't books be written on a range of subjects (football, trains, ponies, fairies) and feature both male and female protaganists? How does reinforcing dated stereotypes of what girls "should" like and what boys "should" like make things any better? If a boy or girl has different interests than what is allegedly "normal" for them to have, and is struggling with their identity as a result, an increasing number of books showing them what they "should" be reading/enjoying is just going to make them feel worse.

I readily accept that there are (obvious) physical and psychological differences between men and women - but most of the differences in general personality and communication arise from social conditioning and the pressure to conform to the norm and to expectations. When I was growing up I maintained that I didn't want kids when I was an adult, and was always told (mostly in extremely patronising terms) that I would "feel different" when I grew up; i.e., that I would start to want children because I'm a girl and that's what girls want. Now I am grown up, and my feelings on the matter haven't changed - but I still regularly encounter people who, when the subject of children arises, insist that I'll change my mind and want kids. Why they hell aren't men subject to these social pressures and expectations? The drive to further the species is just the same in males as it is in females. And no, I don't think babies are adorable: they smell, they throw up on you, they cry - I don't get the appeal, I really don't. Toddlers are entertaining, and when they start speaking it's great (I like the Scrubs line), but the best part about working with kids or playing with young cousins is that when they start to cry, or they throw up, or they soil themselves - I hand them back to the parents and am not required to deal with the mess in any way.

All this pre-conditioning of children is driving me to breaking point: my friends in advertising say they use these stereotypical roles because their market research suggests that the stereotypes hold true (women cook, clean, tidy, nag and raise the kids; men play sports and get dirty and smell and snore and muck about like kids). However, people on the whole tend to follow what they feel is expected of them; and if you're routinely bombarded with these steretypes, then you'll believe them to be a true representation of what men and women are "really like", and so you'll play along with your expected role. If programmes, adverts, films and books showed men and women in wider roles, acting in different ways, then this could help reinforce the positive messages of feminism and help bring us towards a day when men and women are really equal. Is that so much to ask for?

Room 101

I'd say you wouldn't like me when I'm angry, but to be perfectly honest I am angry a significant portion of the day and as such clearly you either do like me when I'm angry, or we're not actually friends. Realising that recent happy-happy-joy-joy posts may give you, the reader, an unbalanced perspective on my nature, I'm bowing to popular pressure (okay, one person's pressure) and my own desires and listing the things that I would banish to Room 101, or would strike from the very face of the earth if I had the power to do so. And, god willing, one day I will. Ideally, one day I will be the God, but I try to keep my aims reasonable. Queen of the World will suffice.

Anyhoo, this is just the list of things I (currently) have no power to change. I do get angry at proper serious issues, too: I read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre and became pretty incandescent with rage; and I'm currently reading In Stitches by Dr Nick Edwards and it makes me want to march all the way to the Houses of Parliament and stand outside screaming, "You idiots, you fucking idiots, why can't you listen to NHS staff for a change?!". But these are things we all have (some) ability to change; we can write to our MPs, sign or create petitions, join protests, set up angry sciency blogs - we can make a difference, although it might be a small one and take ages to impliment any real change. But still. The things listed below, however, are things that, lacking the power to affect, enrage me all the more.

• People getting in my way. This follows on from people who stop in doorways, and for the same essential reason. I have somewhere to be, places to see, people to do, and I want to be able to get there. I do not want some idiot cluttering up the pavement and slowing me down. I hate it when people stop in doorways, or at the top of escalators/stairs, or when they are trundling along the street at about one mile per year and also managing to take up the whole damned pavement so I can't even get past them. Hate it hate it hate it. Even when I was hobbling along on crutches with a broken ankle I was faster than the average Cardiff resident (and smarter than the av-er-age bear) and I feel the Facebook group I Secretly Want to Punch Slow-Walking People In the Back of the Head is my spiritual home. This hatred also applies to people who're serving very slowly at tills - I don't want to be in the queue for the rest of my natural life, thanks, so picking up the pace would really help me out.
  
• People that inexplicably go to empty counters/tills. I saw this all the time back when I worked in a department store, and I see it now when shopping. There's a till with a person stood behind it in plain sight, not that far away, and yet some people will still meander blindly over to a counter where there are no people serving. This drives me crazy - why do they do it?! It's like when I'm stood waiting for an elevator and people come up, stand beside me, then push the button to call the elevator, like I'm some kind of moron who hadn't figured this out already. I may one day snap and thank them profusely for saving me from a potentially eternal wait for an elevator I didn't know how to summon.


• Not getting my own way. I know this is infantile, I know it's (usually) very unreasonable, I know it's unfair - and I just don't care. If that God/Queen of World thing ever comes to pass, so help the rest of you because I will have the world revolving around me. And I'll probably become dissatisfied with that and end it all in a fiery apocalypse.
  
• People who don't have their purse/wallet/bus pass ready when they get to the check-out/onto the bus. What, are you surprised they want money to finalise this transaction? Were you not expecting the driver to ask for your pass or payment? My rage is exacerbated a thousandfold if the person in question spends ten minutes digging through their bag/pockets to find their money, then starts counting out change...
  
• Strangers getting in my personal space. Now, I recognise that at a concert or the like, they're hundreds if not thousands of people around and I will get bumped into and I accept this. But when strangers sit next to me on the bus or train, I don't want any part of them to touch any part of me. It makes me massively uncomfortable, as well as pissing me off. I've usually gone to extreme lengths to press myself as far away from them as possible - and there are some people in this world who then shift even closer to me to take up the space I just made. I want to push them away and start screaming, right in their faces. This also applies when people get too close to me in a queue - I edge forward so I don't have a stranger standing a really uncomfortably familiar distance from me, and they step forward. One day soon I will loose it, turn around and yell at them to just back the fuck away from me. I also get uncomfortable if strangers deliberately touch me: for example, if they pat my hand or arm. This usually happens with older, mostly female, borrowers at the library. I know they're just being friendly and nice, but I really don't like it and you'd think my pulling away from them would clue them in about this - but it doesn't. If I don't socialise with you, that means I don't want you in my personal space. Back off, buddy.
  
• Losing. Sort of goes hand-in-hand with the getting my own way thing. I really, really hate to lose, to the extent that if I know I'm beaten before I begin, then I won't even play. And if I play and lose I want to tantrum. Like full-on, throw myself to the ground screaming and kicking my feet tantrum. I try and rein this in a little and usually end up just stropping off or sulking instead...
  
• Repetitive noise. Ticking clocks, people who say or sing the same line over and over, dripping taps, car/house alarms - you get the picture. Within a very short period, the beating of the hideous heart becomes all I can hear, all I can focus on, until I want to just smash to pieces whatever is making the noise. Worst case offenders: back when I lived at my Mum's, her neighbour would leave his house at around 6am. He would start his motorbike ... then go back inside the house and put on his leathers. Leaving the engine running on the drive. All I dreamt of was kicking his bike over then smashing it up with a baseball bat. It drove me crazy. Then there was the woman who got on the bus and starting playing a massively irritating garage song on her mobile. When the song finished, she played it again. And then a third time. And then she started it up for a fourth time and I was actually getting up out of my seat to tell her to stop when, luckily for both of us, she got off the bus.
  
• Valentine's Day.
  
• Superman.

There's more that could go on this list - lots more. But these are the things I think it acceptable to tell the world about...

In Which Reality Folds In On Itself

I was at the cinema last Wednesday night, and read the following piece of graffiti:-

"I cryed at the last act of Be Kind Rewind".

And I cried for the future. She had the right idea, clearly -- but ultimately it's a case of close, but no cigar. I think this literary genius was surpassed by some teenage girls in work, though, who used the word "swored" in my hearing. I found myself not-quite-muttering, "It's 'swear' or 'swore'." They heard me (or could sense my seething rage at their open abuse, nay, assault, of the English language, I'm not sure which) and so questioned what I meant.

I explained that "swored" is not a word, and even if you were to attach the past-participle "ed" to the end of the word, then in this case it would be "sweared" anyway. They argued, refused to believe me, so I directed them to a dictionary. Naturally they had no idea where they were, which I can understand ... but they didn't seem to know how to use one initially, which was just ... well, words fail. Lucky for me, I can use a dictionary and a thesaurus, so I can confidently state that I found their ignorance appalling. Mostly because, seriously, who is teaching them..? But I digress. After some initial difficulty, they came to me with, ahem, "proof" that they were correct and I was wrong.

They showed me the word "sword". SWORD. SWORD. I feel like this signifies the end of reality as we know it even if Noel Edmonds dressed as God does not.

I know it's not just me that breaks down into a foaming-at-the-mouth fit of crazy-crazy rage at incidents like this, because Lynne Truss feels the same. What I don't know is if this validates my anger or just proves that I am not the only overly sensitive hate-fuelled self-proclaimed defender of the English language in existence.

Also, in the past two weeks I have ended up in three separate conversations about weddings (almost exclusively with girls who, like myself, have zero marriage prospects currently on the horizon -- I am unsure whether they, like me, just see weddings as a way to have a great big massive party in your honour) and two conversations about babies and children. Uhh, what the hell?! I've also been discussing the housing market, mortgages and buying houses, and fear these chats are all indicative of a wider malaise: I am officially growing up. *shudder*

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to go put on my Count Duckula hoodie and read a comics blog...

It's ups and downs, it's ups and downs, it's ups and downs.

Bit of a week of swings and roundabouts, as per usual. Monday night my team won a pub quiz, which is pretty awesome, and Saturday I won a bottle of champagne in a raffle! Fundraiser for my friend's new theatre company ( Bare Knuckle Theatre Company < / promotion>) and a fantastic night. However, the usual good/bad balance of my life soon redressed those wins - some bloody Spanish tourist bumped into me on St Mary Street as I was walking (read: limping) home, knocked the champagne out of my hands and it smashed on the floor. The guy obviously knew it was his fault, he stopped and said "oops" as the bottle smashed - but then he tries to claim it wasn't his fault.

Bastard.

I think I wouldn't have gotten so angry if he'd at least apologised. I doubt it would have completly eased the pain of my loss or prevented me from getting angry at all (I'm pretty much fueled by rage) but it would have at least appeased my wrath somewhat. As is, I'm still not over the loss of that champagne. And that experience is just one example of why right-thinking people avoid St Mary Street on Saturday night (see previous rant).

Still, the rest of the night was lots of fun - especially during the performance. My friend H. and her boyfriend were sat at our table for the start of the show, they get into a screaming argument, he strops off out of the room, my housemate and I don't know where to look ... then H. starts singing, spotlight hits her and it's only then I work out that was part of the performance. It was brilliantly done, a few actors and those involved in the production had sat at different VIP tables that were set up on the centre floor (yep, I was sat at a VIP table, I am super-awesome) and for different parts of the performance they would do their scene around the tables and then sit back down after. Very entertaining!

I've also had a pretty random day today: a guy came into the library I work at, noticed my limp and crutch (still mending from ankle breakage), we had a brief, polite exchange about how I broke said ankle. So far, so normal day. Then later, he hands me a note that says, "For the injured library lady. Call me on this number if you fancy going for a coffee or something!" Why he can't just ask me on a date is kinda beyond me; I was also deeply flustered by being asked out in the middle of the day. Isn't it an unwritten law of British society that we can only make moves on people in the pub or at a club..? It was all very unsettling. I think I blushed. I also went with the classic "I've got a boyfriend" line as the politest way to turn him down - I was in work, I have to be polite to people and keep my natural vitriol and sarcasm in check. Still, was flattering to be asked out on purely aesthetic terms - not like my charming personality and bubbly nature had time to work their wonder, after all.

Be interesting to see where the week goes from here! Gods willing, with some kind of recompense for the loss the that champagne. Still that was probably my bad karma for not sharing it with everyone at our table during the show...

Big City Life

Ahhh, the city. I am a die-hard fan of city living: I enjoy the pubs, the clubs, the fact I can walk to the nearest cinema in under five minutes, that I'm within range for hundreds of different take-aways, the close shops....It's all good. There are downsides to living in the city, though. Obviously. A few of the highlights:

1. On my walk to/from work, I have had to step either over or frighteningly close to the following:-

• Knickers. A pair of fecking women's knickers.
• Several condoms, used. ...I presume, I didn't check or anything, jesus. Walking past the local park is where I tend to pass these. I don't know why a park is a preferred choice to, say, one of the many alleys in the area, but al fresco in a busy urban area isn't my thing so I wouldn't like to comment.
• One (1) pair of Bench jockey shorts, obviously soiled with faeces and hung on a railing for the world to see. Why they required display is rather beyond me.
• A needle. That was an especial treat to behold.
• The ubiquitous broken bottles/glasses.
• Dropped take-aways. Nothing worse than having to walk past last night's kebab on your walk to work at 8.15 in the bloody morning. Especially sick-making if you're nursing a hangover.
• The smell/sight of St Mary Street first thing on a Saturday/Sunday morning. The hen and stag parties are not kind to that street...

2. The people. Ahh, the people. I don't know whether cities attract the, shall we say, more colourful, eccentric members of society; or whether the sheer volume of people concentrated into a small area makes them easier to spot. Either way, you certainly get to see some entertaining/frightening sights...

• Drummer. He's a bit of a Cardiff feature - very tall, skinny black guy with dreads that are often coloured in eclectic ways, he usually has some eye-catching attire on (personal favourite; silver leather trousers, shirtless, with sunglasses and feathers in his hair) and is frequently to be seen beating out loud, fast rhytmns on the many bins around the city. Back when I worked in one of the city's department stores, he'd often come in to talk to us and the whole time you'd be really conscious that you were walking a fine line, that at any moment his friendliness toward you could erode into the mouth-foaming hatred he was expressing for his target of the moment (the government, police, someone who told him off for drumming on bins, the usual...)
• Toy Mic Trevor. He used to really brighten up Queen Street with his vague singing (I never once successfully identified a song out of the arrythmic cacophonic style he favoured) but I've not seen him in a couple of years and I have the sinking, maudlin suspicion that he may have died.
• My random neighbours. On the one side, we have a couple in late middle-age who obviously loathe us. During our Halloween party, we saw them filming guests who were smoking outside the house - the lady of the house had a camera pressed up against her bedroom window, trying to hide behind the curtains. They also stare out every time we take the bins out, and despite my best attempts to smile and be nice and say hello any time we see each other, the best I ever get is dirty looks from them. Conversely, on the other side we have neighbours so friendly they don't let a little thing like not speaking English stop them chatting to us. Using a series of charades-style gestures and the use of sparodic English words mingled in with the Urdu, I've managed to have conversations about our weekend camping trip, my breaking my ankle, and the weather. Their house also smells of the most delicious cooking and I am trying to work our chats up to the point where they offer me food. I love them. Across the road, meanwhile, there's a house that I am beginning to suspect is a brothel. Its house number is lit up in red at night, and there appear to be metal flaps that can be raised to conceal the numbers. The only reason I can think for having this would be to hide the numbers for when the residents aren't in for business. We've had police vans pull up in the street and cart a man off recently, which adds to this suspicion. Next door to that is Crazy Sweary Family. CSF are disturbingly violent: I've seen the woman screaming at her husband/boyfriend to "fuck off, just fuck off" loud enough for me to hear while inside watching tv...and this was in front of her young child, estimated age 3. Nice. Said woman was also locked out once: I was awoken by her banging on her door, screaming for her partner to wake up and let her in. This screaming continued for close to an hour before I cracked and called 101 - I had to get up for work in four hours and she sounded like she was ready to keep trying until she smashed in her own door. Happy days.
• Students. I was once one of them, and I think my bitterness about no longer being a student colours my judgement somewhat ... but is it just me or are they way younger than we were as students?! I'm sure the ones in the student accommodation nearby have an average age of twelve. But in dress sense, they're aged whores. During Fresher's Week we saw one girl in a skirt so short you could see the cheeks of her ass. I mean, fair play she had great legs, but still. Leave a little to the imagination love, yeah? The students are also the ones responsible for all the dropped take-aways and smashed bottles covering the pavements on the route into town from mine. You kids, you don't know you're born! GET OFF MY LAWN!!
• Library users. I think the anonymity of city life is a bad influence on some people, but we certainly get some characters. One lovely example: a society had rented the meeting room at a library I was working at. The woman due to lead the meeting called us and said she was running significanly late due to a traffic accident causing jams; the meeting was due to start in half an hour, and she was close to two hours away. When the group starting arriving for their meeting we explained this to them. One gentleman's response? To yell that the group leader should have called the day before to say she was going to get caught in traffic and be late that morning. He then starting yelling at us - we weren't even part of the fucking group, they were just temporarily hiring space in the building. Of course, obviously I was in the wrong for not using my magic crystal ball to predict the future and go to this woman's house in order to warn her the traffic would be bad and she should leave a lot earlier in order to make the meeting on time.
• The aforementioned hen and stag parties. I can't pinpoint exactly when the 'Diff became such a hotspot for these groups, but in the last couple of years St Mary Street has become the place the locals avoid like the plague, for obvious reasons.
• The whores. Working girls, if you prefer. There's a few that work the street just a couple blocks from my house, which is always disconcerting. I am also beginning to wonder if they're taking clients back to the house across from mine with the red lights...There are a few hooker hot-spots around the city, that I won't detail here because I don't want anyone to think I'm becoming some kind of guide to prostitution in south east Wales. But it's always a treat to see their outfits. As my gran would've said, their clothes fit where they touch...

But apart from all that, it's great! I'll probably rant more on this subject the more I think about it.

And It's Not Just Because I'm Single.

I just turned on the television and what came on was an episode of 'Deal or No Deal', which is a show in which Noel Edmonds tests quantum theory. This episode was themed for Valentine's Day - and Noel was dressed up as God.

I'm pretty sure I've just witnessed the collapse of reality. Civilisation as we know it is no more and the world is crumbling around us. I estimate we have days left, at best. Use them wisely.

On the subject of Valentine's Day, I bloody hate this time of year. I have personal reasons I won't go into for not liking this month, but Valentine's is really salt in the wound. A Hallmark Holiday that seems specifically designed to undermine the self-confidence of singletons, it takes financial advantage of those who're coupled up and is a big slap in the face to the rest of us. It doesn't help that I find it an insulting waste of time - it may as well be called "Love Day" and have us buying crappy Kisses Make Me Boogie O'Lanterns. It's a truly patronising day; and how the hell is St Valentine supposed to relate to love in the first place?!

I've actually been seeing someone when Valentine's has rolled around in the past. Being a grindingly cynical realist and dating someone with similarly unromantic tendancies, I'd just presumed we wouldn't be doing anything or getting anything for each other on the day. However, as the ominous 14th draws closer the guy feels it encumbent upon him to inform me that he doesn't do Valentine's Day and so won't be getting me anything. I reply that I am of a similar mindset and hadn't expected anything - but this then makes it look as though I'm just saying that because he's said it first and I don't want to get humiliated. Regardless of your single/taken status, this day is a fucking emotional minefield.

It drives me crazy: everywhere you go, whatever channel you're watching, all over the Internet, it's red hearts and roses and cupids and cookies shaped like hearts and rose petals spelling out "I love you" and cards made out of pure sugar and I want to be sick and/or burn shit down. Preferably the latter. Of course while at any other time of year this just makes me look unromantic and disillusioned, around Valentine's it makes me look like a bitter singleton. People completely re-evalute their interpretation of one's actions based on the date, and how stupid is that?

Flowers cost a fortune and die within a couple of days; themed teddy bears (apart from this one, which is frankly the best gift ever) are twee and saccharine; and chocolates or candy ... well, they're always welcome, really, but that's non-holiday-specific.

Is it too much to ask that I not have everyone else's loved-up happiness crammed down my throat? We've only just gotten past Christmas, people, and that's lovey-dovery enough for me for one year.

....Of course, I'd much prefer to be hating Valentine's Day alongside my boyfriend.
Who is Batman and also a firefighter and a jet pilot and he has a Harrier jump jet that he totally lets me fly sometimes and we live in a mansion and he fights crime and fires and international terrorism and it is AWESOME.

James Cameron's 'Avatar' Diary

Dear Diary
Today I realised it has totally been over ten years since Titanic, and I can't coast off of that forever. Well, I totally could 'cos it made me mega-rich, but I don't want to. I'm totally gonna rite write another film.

............

Dear Diary
Coming up with a new idea is hard. I wish there was some way I could just, like, find a story that someone else has done and totally use that, but without getting sued or anything 'cos I hate that.

............

Dear DiaryToday I watched Pocahontas with the kids. It was awesome! If I still felt real human emotion I'm sure I would've cried a bunch and stuff. What a great story! ...Hey, that gives me a great idea!!! That film's, like, over 12 years old. No one remembers back that far, right? I'm totally gonna use that plot for my new story! I'll do a new Pocahontas!

Except I don't like the past, that's boring, I like the future and space and shit. I'm totally gonna set Pocahontas in space in the future!!! It will be mega-awesome.

............

Dear DiaryWriting my new film is going really well. Yesterday I watched Dances with Wolves and that was also pretty neat, there was this one great scene where the wolf that Kevin Costner has made friends with gets totally killed and it's wicked-sad. Costner also gets totally accepted into the tribe and shit, which is cool.

Hey, that film is almost like 20 years old! I can totally use those plot points and no one will know where they're from! Except I won't use a wolf ... Hey, there was that magic spirit tree in Pocahontas! I'll have a magic spirit tree in my movie, and it will totally get killed by the white men instead of a wolf. That will work super-awesome!

............

Dear Diary

I totally need a reason for white men to have come to my new magic planet, and thinking of a McGuffin is hard. It needs to be something that would totally fuck up the planet, something that will cause mega-huge damage to look for. Something you have to mine for would work, right?

It can't be oil, but maybe some kind of mineral..? I need something that sounds science-y. Wait: science things usually have "ium" at the end, right? So I just need to think of some science-y word that ends in "ium" and they can totally be mining for that. Until I think of something better I'll call it, like, "unobtainium" or something until I think of something better.

............

Dear Diary

I can't think of anything better. I'm gonna stick with "unobtainium".

............

Dear Diary

There's a shitload of exposition and background stuff in my movie that the audience will totally need to know. I have to try and find some clever way to deliver all the exposition in a subtle way, something that seems wicked cool like the rest of my movie. A smart way.

............

Dear Diary

Screw it, I'm just gonna go with a voice-over. That'll work.

............

Dear Diary

I've totally thought of a way to make the voice-over work in the movie! I'll have the lead make a video log and totally give reports and stuff. That'll fit real well in my space future!

But I've already written up like a ton of script for the early scenes and I don't wanna re-rite write them. Think I'll just stick with the voice-over then introduce the video log and the audience will totally figure it was a video log all along.

............

Dear Diary

The video log has totally made me think of something else! In Dances with Wolves it's Costner's diary that totally leads the white men to the Indian tribe that adopted him. I will so make it the video log that helps the white guys find out about the magic spirit tree and stuff! Oh, and the main white guy will totally have been working with the Marines all along and then he falls in love with the aliens and he totally becomes one of them and shit and then he feels wicked bad about telling the Marines all that shit. That will be super-powerful. People will cry and shit!!

............

Dear Diary

I was totally watching Terminator 2 earlier to remind me how freakin' awesome I am (note to self: I AM SO FUCKING AWESOME AND EXPLOSIONS ARE NEAT) and then I remembered: there's a Terminator 2: 3D ride, right? And that's pretty sweet. So imagine how sweet it would be to have the whole movie in 3D?! It will totally kick ASS!!!

And we can charge more at the theatres so I'll totally earn more money, which will rule. I can buy, like, three more houses and build another Titanic.

............

Dear Diary

I need to think of some awesome alien creatures. Things with more legs look really alien, right? Look at bugs, they're just fucked up. I'm totally gonna give all my new creatures like six legs and they will all be totally badass and it will be awesome.

............

Dear Diary,

Thinking about all those aliens has made me think of Aliens. That movie was awesome. I am awesome. I totally love Vasquez, she was a badass character. I'm totally gonna rite write her into my new movie! Aliens is like over 20 years old, no one will remember that it's totally the same character.

I'm also gonna add a shitload more explosions, because they're mega-awesome.