The Dangers Of Arse Wiping With False Nails

So Christmas 2012 has been and gone. 2013 doesn't even seem like a real year. It's as though we are all living in some extremely boring sci-fi film. This would all make sense considering the amount of disfiguring attributes so many women seem to be sporting as of late. I just don't get it. I have issues with a selection of women's "enhancements"...

...The first and foremost of these being fucking horrificly ugly, camel-esque, False Eyelashes. They are truly vomit-worthy. I literally do not know anybody who looks good with them. They are tacky and obvious and just pointless. Everyone has eyelashes. Be good to them and they wont crust off in the wind. Take your make-up off once in a while.
Also, I have come to discover that you GLUE them on. GLUE. ON YOUR EYES. This is clearly madness. It's got to be some sort of viral sci-fi mind infection. There is no sense in it. It's like Chlamydia- even the most unexpected, self respecting women are popping up with them. They truly remind me of some sort of drag-queen cartoon camel. So what if you don't have luscious long eyelashes? I'm sure you have other great features to compensate for it. Plus, I hardly think any man is observant enough to notice your stubby singed lashes in the first place. Chances are his eyes are elsewhere.

Secondly, Scouse-Brows. I genuinely thought this was a joke. I thought "Desperate Scousewives" was a spoof. When I realised that it was real life I felt I could at least feel safe in the more humble area of Pembrokeshire. But no. They are here. THEY ARE HERE. And they are growing, both in numbers and in size. They are like cockroaches on your forehead.
In my humble opinion, they are a sure fire way to make yourself look like a tacksville-tramp. They also guarantee to distract from any other part of your face. Which, if you have some sort of horrific ailment/elephantitis/puss-covered acne - is great. Although, I fear I'd rather any of those things to having, what appears to be two large, hairy shits above my eyes.

Thirdly, Gem Covered Nails. These are both unsightly and, quite frankly, a health risk. Forget gun laws, there needs to be restrictions on these claws. My worry is this: how on earth are you supposed to wipe your arse without injuring yourself? What if you lose a gem mid-wipe? That's surely very worrying.
Also. Masturbation?
Also. Sexual foreplay?
Also. touching anything?
Also. why do you want to look like the witch from snow white? You know the one- with the warts and the long jewelled nails? Maybe I am just far too uncool and I have failed to notice that chav/hillbilly is the new black, and that TopShop are currently unloading crates full of velour tracksuits and ra-ra skirts. Ooh and maybe white-leather thigh boots have made a comeback? Maybe.

Now, New Years is fast approaching and I will make the same resolution I have done for the last six years; to be more ladylike.
I understand that I am 21 and I need to be wearing make-up every now and again. And that shorts are just not suitable winter wear. I must stop leaving my leg hair to grow and properly commit to using a hairbrush on a daily basis.
However; with this in mind, I will continue to despise the above... accessories? feminine aesthetic additives? Halloween-chic adornments? forever and always. And I think there is not a single woman in the world who isn't more beautiful without them.

Happy New Year everyone, I hope 2013 doesn't result in alien takeover and that you all make it the year for your success.



That's all for now
Jojo xxx

Reassessing

The Winter is coming and it's not giving Autumn a look-in. It seems to have become Arctic in a matter of weeks here in Tenby. The wind is bitter and ferocious, the sea icy and aggressive. The town itself has become ghost-like. No one seems to be here, no one walking around or drinking coffee or even working.

All this quietness and coldness seems to have infiltrated my conciousness. It suddenly seems like the fall from Summer is over and I've landed hard on the solid cold sand of the beach, the wind slicing at my bare skin, threatening to erase me completely. I'm a graduate with a good degree from a good university and here I am- in Pembrokeshire again, waitressing.
And I know I am here through choice, but it's beginning to wear thin. I'm bored of not using my brain. I'm freelancing but it's not enough to fill this gap that's telling me I'm underachieving.

I know I'll have my time to get serious about work after travelling, and that my priority needs to be saving right now, but it's hard seeing friends I graduated with off doing the real deal,whilst my writing is lying dormant.

The last six months have been so unlike any others in many ways. I've graduated, I've moved back home, I have an uncertain future ahead of me. With no real plans or guarantee's it's hard to be confident about where I'll end up.

I've also had a few revelations. That time changes a lot. And even though you hope someone had stayed the same, it doesn't make it so. And nor does it mean you are the person you once were.

It's easy to get stuck in an intrinsic time warp- believing something or someone is a certain way because that's how you remember it/them. And then the bubble is popped. It only takes one incident or realisation and the reality of the matter forces its way back into your deluded mind, tearing the lining as it breaks through. That's a strange feeling. To suddenly understand that the very thing you've been holding on to doesn't exist as you believed it to.
Fool on you for believing it could be preserved like a diary in a museum. No matter how hard you try to keep it in mint condition, the writing on those pages has to fade eventually, the light of day has to take some of what was written and dissolve it in it's brightness.

It can be hard to be faced with this reality, but it's probably for the best. It's probably going to make some space for a new chapter to be written. Maybe a happier one, without the stress that the chapters before brought with them.

Where friendship turned sour, there are new people for you to meet and find a bond with. And where love faded, so it will be again.

Sometimes it's good to reassess where you are, who you are and who you want around you. Because with that in mind, it's hard to go wrong.

Distance

Distance is a tricky thing. It can be largely immeasurable in some circumstances. For example, someone can be a long way away but you may feel very close to them still. In another sense someone can be nearby and yet you feel undoubtedly detached and out of touch/reach with them.

My pals Grace and Esme live at opposite ends of the country to me and yet I feel incredibly close to them. Like we are in each others atmospheres still. It's as though as long as we are in each others minds and thoughts the distance just evaporates between us. That's how I feel anyway. I may not know the day to day goings on but I do know that if anything important should happen the miles and motorways would be irrelevant. 

 It's more of a hunger, I suppose, when things are romantically involved. It's a more dangerous feeling. A fear of being lost or forgotten, of distance changing what you built. 

It's funny how complex it can become missing someone. It's almost as though they are a figment of your imagination. There is nothing physical left of them. Only memories of their existence stand as evidence and even those can seem to fade and change and dissolve in your mind. 

When I think about someone who I have lost I can imagine them in my mind in a sort of passive way, but when I try to think about what their hair looked like that day, or try to picture their whole face, it goes blurry. I worry that one day all I will have left will be echo's of memories that were never renewed. Left to lose their colour like a picture in sunlight.

Sometimes you can feel the distance growing. Like you are connected by crepe paper and it's slowly tearing and falling away. And you know it's all too fragile to be reckless with. It's too flimsy to grab onto and pull back at. That's the worst kind of distance. The distance that chokes you up. When you can feel it happening but you can't save it. No matter how much it means to you.

Sometimes distance makes you miss someone more. Other times it can sap your energy and you become too tired. Too bored of it and too aware of the affect it can have on you. Like your brain tells you from experience that it isn't worth the mental head-work of ploughing through the day thinking about that person and wishing they were with you. 

Mostly I wish there wasn't distance at all. Mostly I wish I could have everyone near me. Mostly I wish death didn't happen, or at least that I were more prepared for it. 

But I suppose, regardless of what I wish or hope or feel there is very little I can do about the outcome. In the end, distance kind of does at it pleases regardless of how it makes you feel. Like a selfish ex-boyfriend or the Welsh weather or my bank balance.

That's all for now,

Jojo xxx

Struggle Street

It is eleven months until my proposed leaving date for my year of exploration around the world, and, after having worked seven days a week all through the Summer and now six nights a week through winter, I am still somehow in the depths of a rather bulky overdraft. I understand that having a free overdraft is the best loan I'll ever get and that I shouldn't be stressing about it but I just want to be in the black and to be saving towards something. Negative money doesn't spur me on so much, as I am only working to get back to zero at the moment.

People all around me are off doing exciting things, whilst I'm here making very little progress, feeling a little left behind with it all. Tess is in Tanzania, Vicky has moved to Cardiff starting a new chapter of her life, Snakey is living in France,  the man I like is off doing things in Europe.
I am in New Hedges, with a tip stealing boss and a wetsuit with a hole in the ass. There's something enormously saddening about that.

This week I've been thinking about couples. Couples who are ready to commit. Most of my friends (and ex-boyfriends) will know that commitment isn't exactly my forte. Don't get me wrong, I am very loyal, but I get claustrophobic. I get this itchy feeling that I'm in too deep when I'm only just paddling. I crave freedom, I need air.

It's starting to worry me recently, am I destined to be alone? There have been many wonderful men in my life whom I haven't been ready to commit to, despite being attracted to them and trusting them. Is it something learned?

It seems some people jump from relationship to relationship without a second thought. I have no qualms with that, as they all seem very happy, I just have to really take my time before I can even consider belonging to someone. Maybe that's the problem- that I think of it as possession rather than just being happy with someone. Or, more likely, it's a product of a 'broken home' with divorced parents and a mother who is just a little more than wary when it comes to men. It probably doesn't help that both my dad and brother have pretty dodgy fidelity records too.

Either way, I would like to be able to imagine being with anyone for a long period of time. Because, ultimately, I want that for myself. I want to start a family one day with a man I love, in a house with a mortgage and bills and council tax. It's the in between bit that's the problem.

Maybe it's a matter of it becoming part of me without my noticing. Maybe it is a maturity thing. Maybe I need to grow up a little before commitment becomes a breeze.

I suppose all this has come to mind because there's always been one person I've assigned that role of big commitment to. Now it seems less likely that this will happen- life has gotten in the way and time changes things quicker than the wind in winter.

Things don't seem the same as they were even two months ago, and it scares me to think I've been flippant with something of such magnitude. I have always lived thinking what will be will be. It all happens for a reason. Everything that everyone does will all make sense in the end. But now I'm feeling there are such things as grave mistakes and I have started to understand that regret can haunt people for a lifetime. This will make little sense to lots of you, but anonymity often creates a roundabout way of explaining things.

On a lighter note. I have met someone that I enjoy spending time with, who I can have a real giggle with and who makes me feel beautiful first thing in the morning. That's not a bad find I reckon. Although it would be nice if I could pick someone who stays in the country for longer than a month at a time.

That's the irony of things like that I suppose. Something out there is laughing at me for protecting my heart for so long only to open it up for guaranteed instability. I was sadder than expected saying goodbye today. Took myself by surprise.

In other news I got some freelance work recently, I wrote words for this and really enjoyed it:

In the Moment by Garmin from Garmin EMEA on Vimeo.

I now have some press releases locally to write and work in China- doing website content and blogs etc for a company out there. Which is all very lovely, as exciting media-related jobs in Wales seem few and far between and I need to stay here for cheap rent so I can save for my trip.

So if you know of anyone who wants press releases, ad's, PR, portfolio writing, copy writing or any of that lot doing, give me a thought, eh? Struggling writer and all that. Sounds romantic but is really just a bit skanky. Could do with having at least one pair of jeans/trousers this winter. My pins are getting chilly in shorts.

That's all for now,
Jojo xxx

Becoming Feral

Waterwynch has my heart. It is a small beach down the road from my house, you have to do a little off road navigation to get there so it's often empty. I love having it to myself.
Something about it remedies me. The sound of the small waves falling onto the pebbles on a high tide like tonight is just delicious - the crinkling and shuffling of all the stones being jangled around by the water's undercurrent, sucking back with the pull of the moon.

When the tide is out I usually walk to the cave on the right, it's tucked into this tiny bay, snuggled up to the cliffs. I love how the sea looks from inside the cave; the mouth of it opening out onto the powerful light of the water. I like to climb here too. Nothing too ambitious, I just like moving up high and scaling the edges of my favourite place, seeing it from every possible angle.

Tonight it is a light evening. The sun is low, creating a syrupy blanket of soft light on the water and cliffs. The waves are kissing the pebbles right up close to the stone path that leads back up to reality. My body absorbs the views and sounds and textures as much as it can, they settle something inside me.

Whilst I am here I can think.
I don't come here very often any more. Mostly because it feels like a sacred place to me. I rarely bring people here. I'm protective of it. Like it is a part of me. Like if someone comes here the sea will whisper my secrets back with each lulling of the waves. It feels personal here, intimate.

I usually come to Waterwynch when I'm feeling a little low. Today I'm feeling a little lost. The months following the end of university have been fun, I've worked hard at a job I adore. But there has been something else. An underlying itch, a niggle, an undercurrent. It's asking "what next?".

Other people are asking that too. My parents, my grandparents, my friends, and I suppose I have been as well.

But I just don't know the answer. I don't want to go to a job that I don't have a passion for and end up turning grey inside. I don't want the money and the pencil skirts and that sinking feeling when my alarm goes off every morning.
I want to explore, to see the world. I want to explore my abilities as a writer, decide what it is exactly that I want to do, I want to get to know new friends, see new opportunities and paths. And I don't want to jump into something just because it is what people would want or what is expected of me.

If I'm completely honest with myself I know what's keeping me here in a tiny town with little job opportunities, gossip and extortionate drink prices. It's the sea.  I want to be in it. All of the time; preferably on a board but happily just swimming.
It's gotten so under my skin this year. I ache when I'm away from it, it frustrates me if  I can't get to it and it has started to bother me when there aren't waves.

And I know I can't flounce around being romantic about the sea forever, getting more and more feral as my money runs out, but I want that for now (not the feral part). I will be a responsible young adult and make big decisions and pay council tax one day, but I have the rest of my life to be a grown up. So I am going to enjoy being excited about nature for a while. It could be a lot worse. I could be into hard drugs and dangerous men.

And at graduation when everyone is talking about internships and jobs and their new lives I will be proud of my pals and their achievments, knowing I will one day have mine.

That's all for now,
Jojo xxx

The Sound of Music

My lovely pal and the very talented Grace Dean

Music surrounds us, it can swallow us and mangle our heads. It can persuade us or depress us, uplift us and understand us. Sometimes you'll listen to a song and think that it just must have been written for you at that time in your life. It feels like a sign that your feelings are justified. The truth is that most music is about feelings that we will all experience at some point.

For most of us its okay to listen to the words in amongst the instruments, but hard to face them in silence.

There's something very special about sitting in a dark room with some music on.I often find it hard to identify the feeling I'm experiencing. It can make you feel desperate, like you want to tie something down inside you. Like every fibre of your being is drawn to the sound in the dark, like iron filings to a magnet. 

Music has got to have been around since the beginning of time. It's absolutely human instinct to make noise and beat and tune with things. That's pretty cool to me. 

There are some artists that you will love but your friends don't really identify with. And vice versa. I don't know what it is that attracts us to particular music. Maybe it's like we all have our own music personalities, maybe its intrinsic, maybe it depends on who we are and what we've done and the types of feelings we are prone to. 

So here is a list of my favourite artists this year. You will probably notice a similarity in them as I think I'm an acoustic girl at heart. You might well not warm to them at all. But I would like to give them credit for being the soundtrack to my year.

     ARTIST

1) Daughter - Tracks: Peter, Candles, Landfill, Medicine, Youth, Love.

2) Trevor Hall - Te Amo, Where's the Love, Love Song, Other Ways, Lime Tree, Brand New Day. 

3) Matt Corby - Big Eyes, Breathe, Winter, Brother, Souls a Fire.

4) Alt-J - Matilda, Fitzpleasure, Breeze Blocks, Tessalate.

5) LP - Into the Wild, Levitator, Only Good With You, Tokyo Sunrise.

6) The Bronze Medal - Milk, Autumn.

7) The Naked and Famous - Young Blood, Punching in a Dream, No Way.

8) Walk Off The Earth - Corner of Queens, Broke, Love Sponge (Buju Banton cover)

9) Pretty Lights - The whole album, "Taking Up Your Precious Time".

10) Angus and Julia Stone - All of Me, Mango Tree, Babylon, Paper Aeroplane.

As I said, they might not tickle your fancy but they tickle mine. Music has a way of attaching itself to you and getting to the very core of you. These guys, especially Trevor Hall, did just that this year. 

I think the important thing is that if you love music to surround yourself in it. It's good for your soul. It magnifies your emotions. And yes, it might make you a little dramatic on times (I can't be the only one who has flung myself around my room pretending to be in a music video) but everyone needs a little drama in their life sometimes, and better it be in the form of music than your mum shagging your boyfriend. 

That's all for now

Jojo xxxx

I'll leave you with a classic.

The Rules of Small Town Socialising

Since being back in Tenby I have noticed that the behaviour of locals in a social environment are quite peculiar. I have compiled a list of rules, created by me through observation of the folk of this beautiful little town.

THE RULES

1) You absolute must have an opinion on everyone regardless of whether you've ever met them or not. Small Towns without opinions become barren and tumbleweed starts to...well, tumble.

2) You must drink excessively at least three times a week in order to not disappear off the social ladder. In fact, you must actively encourage alcoholism. The Small Town relies on such revelry to sustain it's ecosystem.

3) You must work your little butt off all week long doing hideous shifts for below minimum wage only to shit it up the wall at an overpriced pub, talking the same conversations on rotation to the same selection of locals.

4) You must be hideously two-faced in order to successfully intergrate.

5) Actually, that's not fair. You could be genuinely nice to everyone. But you must accept that people will choose to dislike you anyway and will probably start rumours about you.

6) Settle with the fact that tourists and customers will talk to you like you are thick as shit. Don't you dare mention your degree/ promotion/ trade. That will make you look stuck up.

7) Face facts: If you are so much as seen breathing near a member of the opposite sex people will assume you are shagging.

8) Grit your teeth and smile whilst handing over £8 to get into what can only be described as a urine-odoured pit disguised as a club. Then joyfully hand over £5 for a measly drink in a grimy plastic cup. Dance to 90's music blasting from a shoddy CD player and cheer when the 'DJ' announces that "Stereophonics' 1000 Trees is next!!" .

9) Observe jumped up boys/ 'lads' mindlessly scrap with anything that moves, throwing punches like a drunk baby with autism. The next day you must claim that you were there/involved/saw someone's jaw snap.

10) Let people who buy their entire wardrobe from New Look snigger at you in your flip flops, tee and shorts. You are a fashion disaster and they are pioneering fashionista's, remember?

11) Become pals with someone in the toilet queue only to overhear them later saying that your hair is shit and that you are a horrific person. You are a horrific person, your hair is shit, but you did hear them do a wet fart through the cubicle door so it's all cool.

12) Men are worth more than your dignity. Shamelessly drape yourself over at least four different men and stare daggers at anyone who so much as catches eye contact with them.

13) Don't even think about talking to anyone who has snogged/shagged/texted/waved at anyone you know. In fact to save confusion just stay mute for the night. These places are so incestual it's the best way to avoid a  vodka diet coke on your chops.

14) Do not be fooled into thinking that Small Town men are less bitchy than the girls. Boy can these guys gossip and stir the pot. Think Queens with homophobia.

15) If you do manage to find someone you are allowed to fancy, come to terms with the fact that complete strangers have the right to ask you if you are a couple/shagging/what it's like. In order for the Small Town cycle to continue it is imperative that everyone knows your business.

Now, reading this you may think I hate living here. But, despite all these ridiculously laughable unspoken rules and habits, I love it here. I love knowing everyone when I walk in a pub. I love wearing flip flops out. I love finding out which school mate is pregnant. I love seeing the same people every time I'm out. There's something communal about it, it feels safe. If you get paraletic and collapse into the gutter, someone will find you and put you in a cab home, or know your mums number to call her.

Ciao for now

Jojo xxx