Instagram Shots I Will Never Understand

I’ve posted before about how much I love Instagram, and also about the general ridiculousity of it. Lately I have seen some of the most bizarre things being Instagrammed and consequently blogged.

The menu of the restaurant you’re eating at

Now what’s that in aid of? If you’re going to do ‘food porn’, at least do it properly! A tinted photo of a menu that is too out of focus to be read- that is not an interesting photograph. You’re only allowed a menu picture if there’s something hilariously misspelled on there. Minus points if the menu is actually obscured or illegible due to the filter and angle.

A Starbucks cup

A non-descript Starbucks cup. With nothing else in the shot. No hint at what’s inside. Not even one of those ‘look they got my name wrong’ shots- now they are quite amusing. Just a picture of a takeout coffee cup with a fancy filter put over it. Who needs to see this? We’ve all seen a Starbucks cup before. You’re wasting everyone’s time.

An aeroplane window

We get it, you’re going on holiday, or you’re travelling, or you’re flying somewhere flash for work. That’s very nice for you. The fact is, clouds look like clouds, and we can’t tell what country you’re flying over or into.

Are you guilty of taking any of these ridiculous Instagram shots? Which shots do you always roll your eyes at?

Give me a shout if any of these Instagram shots are yours & you want me to remove from the post. No hard feelings!

January 27, 2012
by Emily 17 Comments

what’s in my handbag

I’m a really nosey person. I usually manage to restrain myself and not rifle through other people’s belongings. This is why I love these ‘what’s in my bag’ posts that appear occasionally on blogs. I get to peek about in people’s bags, with their permission! How great is that? So if you’re like me, and love to look at other people’s things, here’s what’s in my handbag.

I add and subtract things from it every day, so this is what I had in my handbag on Monday 23rd January 2012. Here we have: a wallet (which I received as part of a secret Santa present from this lovely lady), some loose change that clearly did not make it into the aforementioned wallet, a mirror with a picture of Medusa on it (bought from the Uffizi gallery gift shop and possibly my favourite thing in the world), a copy of The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams, three lip balms, a stray necklace, a variety of receipts, train tickets, my peculiar bright pink Chinese phone, a leaflet for Durham Book Fair, Tesco clubcard, Moleskine diary, and a biro. I used to carry some food and a drink in my handbag at all times (because I am a child) but lately I keep them in the car instead.

Isn’t this just the classiest what’s in my bag post that you’ve ever seen? Loose change and charity shop receipts are just as much a part of life as fancy phones and pretty trinkets.

January 22, 2012
by Emily 4 Comments

20 Questions

I used to love filling in these surveys when I had a Livejournal. I found this one on Clean Eating Chelsey’s blog.

1) What is one of your favorite ways to spend a Saturday?

With Rich, enjoying a lazy breakfast, then heading out exploring a local town for a day, then coming back home to watch some films, relax, and cook something amazing for ourselves. Or with friends, going out for breakfast, going to the park/shopping, then getting our gladrags on and heading out for a boogie. Or on my own, reading, writing and eating.

2) List your top three favorite TV shows.

How I Met Your Mother
Red Dwarf
The IT Crowd

3) Would you rather be in pictures or take them?

Take them, although I do enjoy a bit of posing.

4) Why do you blog?

I blog because I like to write, I like to share my experiences with others, I enjoy the blogging ‘community’, and I’m a bit narcissistic.

5) Share five websites that you visit regularly…

Facebook
Gmail
Twitter
WordPress
Tumblr

6) If you could have lunch with one person from your Twitter list who would it be?

I would take Sad Apostrophe out for lunch. I think they need cheering up.

7) List a few of your favorite snacks.

Lately I’m all about cottage cheese, with sea salt and black pepper, with a crumbled up cracker mixed into it. I enjoy all manner of fruit, vegetables, and crisps. Celery with peanut butter. Rice cakes with laughing cow cheese, cucumber, and either Marmite or burger mustard. Cereal bars (not the kind with fried fruit in though, vom).

8 ) Do you have a pet? If so, what kind?

No pets round here. I had mice when I was younger.

9) Which three material possessions would you struggle to live without?

My laptop. My diary. My car.

10) What’s your favorite drink?

I really like cream soda.

11) Do you enjoy cooking?

Yes, I find it very satisfying.

12) Do you have children?

No. That would have been quite a secret to keep for a whole year of blogging, wouldn’t it?

13) What are your favorite hobbies?

Do writing and reading even count as hobbies any more? I do them a lot. Blogging, if that counts, and cooking. I really need to get some more interesting hobbies. I’m planning on learning Italian this year (or trying to) so that might count as a hobby.

14) Would you consider yourself to be shy or outgoing?

Generally outgoing, but I can be painfully shy.

15) If you could change one thing about yourself, what would you change?

I would stop being a nail biter. It’s an awful habit and I’ve actually managed to stop twice before, but now I’m doing it again. Blech. I wish I could change the part of my brain that reverts to chewing on my nails when stressed.

16) Who is your favorite actor/actress?

I love Winona Ryder.

17) What’s the coolest thing you’ve done this week?

I signed up to do some volunteering, all social media/writing/press/events related so if it all goes through it will be good fun, a good thing to do, and good experience and CV fodder. Win/win all round!

18) Do you live near your family or far from them?

I live with my mum, my dad and my younger sister. My older sister lives about 2hrs away with her boyfriend. My grandma lives 40 minutes away. My aunts, uncles & cousins are all about an hour away.

19) List three of your talents.

Writing, ability to skim-read and spot mistakes very quickly, making people laugh.

20) What is your greatest attribute?

I’m really good at analysing and noticing patterns in the way that I behave, and the way that I react to certain things. Some people seem very clueless about their own emotions but I think I’ve got mine sussed out. I just need to work on not overreacting, rather than just being aware that I have a habit of doing it.

December 1, 2011
by Emily 16 Comments

Dear Santa,

I’ve been a good girl this year. I started this blog. I got published for the first time. I was in a play. I graduated with a 2:1. I planned my life.

Here’s a couple of things I would like. I don’t ask for much.

~ Haruki Murakami books.

~ A Kindle. It took so, so little to knock me off my anti-Kindle perch.

~ A job and a house, please.

~ All the dresses I saw in the costume gallery in Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

(click image for source)

~ Another fantastic Christmas dinner like last year.

Scallops with pancetta and minted pea puree, Christmas dinner with roast duck and roasted garlic mashed potato, red wine poached pears, Chambord champagne and sloe gin & tonic

~ A trip to Berlin.

~ A party with all of my friends and my boyfriend. I don’t see any of them nearly enough. I haven’t adapted to not seeing my uni housemates every day, and I don’t even get to see the friends who live in the same area as me very often.

~ A bottle of Absolut mandarin to drink at said party. I promise I’ll share.

~ All of the jewellery from this post.

~ A sum of approximately £9,000 to fund an MA. Come on, mysterious benefactor, I know you’re out there somewhere.

Is it way too early for a Christmas themed post? What are your opinions on when the festive season should officially start?
What’s on your list for Santa?
What do you usually eat for Christmas dinner? (We have turkey most years, the duck was a very tasty anomaly.)

November 7, 2011
by Emily 1 Comment

The problem with job adverts

A.K.A: And They Wonder Why So Many Graduates Are Unemployed

Yes, I know I never stop whining about job hunting. I don’t how I’ll cope if when someone finally takes pity on me and employs me.

I’ll put this bluntly: Some job adverts are completely awful. Bad spelling, bad grammar. No mention of a place, company, or description of the role, all replaced with all-caps rambling about PAYING OFF YOUR STUDENT LOANS BY THIS TIME NEXT YEAR and ARE YOU AN AMBITIOUS DEGREE HOLDER? It makes me wonder if it would be so incredibly hard to create an advert along the lines of ‘BlahBlah Limited is a company specialising in Things, based in A Place. We are looking for a recent graduate to fill the role of Something Something. The job includes this, that, and the other. You will be expected to work these hours. We will pay you this much money.’

These ambiguous job adverts are how you end up applying for three jobs, getting offered an interview for all of them, realising they all rang you off the same phone number, doing a bit of snooping and finding out that it’s all a massive door-to-door sales scam that is basically run out of a shed and is more likely to take your money than pay you any.*

I just read one of my job email newsletters (of which I receive four daily**) and under job title are the words ‘8 WEEKS UNTIL XMAS’. No… no, sorry. That’s not a job title. ‘CALLING ALL GRADS – HAVE YOU CONSIDERED A CAREER IN RECRUITMENT?’ What is this? Will you please stop shouting at me? CALLING ALL EMPLOYERS, STEP AWAY FROM THE CAPS LOCK!

After all this extensive job-hunting, and subsequent whinging, I feel like I’m quite equipped now to offer a bit of advice on how to navigate the weird and wonderful word of graduate job adverts.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Chances are there’s no such thing as a part-time job in a creative company, no experience required, immediate start, with a £20k salary. Feel free to prove me wrong if this describes your own job, but… just no. I don’t believe it.
Marketing does not necessarily mean what you think it means, and nor does fundraising. More often than not it’s just a fancy way of saying ‘telesales’ or ‘door-to-door sales’ or ‘leafleting’ while escaping the negative connotations.
Just because you set your search parameters to, for example, ‘jobs in Bristol’, ‘salary between £15-18k’, and ‘secretarial, admin & PA jobs’ does not mean that the search results aren’t going to return an unpaid fashion magazine internship in Central London. That’s just the way the internet (and the job market) work, I am afraid.

* This is a completely true story, folks. Steer well clear of job adverts that shout things at you about marketing & sales. Also if they mention charity fundraising. They are dirty liars who are abusing the good-natured among us who ‘charity work?! I want me some of that!’

** FML

October 4, 2011
by Emily 2 Comments

Girl Crush: Paloma Faith

Confession: I have a massive girl crush on Paloma Faith.

Confession #2: I used to kind of hate her. Well, that special kind of ‘hate’ that is reserved for celebrities and other people you’ve never met and who don’t affect your life in any way, but who irritate you for no apparent reason. I don’t know when I stopped feeling this way about her, but I do know that at some point in my third year of university I was listening to Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful? in its entirety every day, and watching Youtube clips of her interviews in order to procrastinate on writing my essays.

It’s Christmas and I Hate You

Stargazer

Play On

* All pictures from the Paloma Faith facebook page

September 30, 2011
by Emily 1 Comment

Five Things Friday

last five meals I ate

Bagel with spring onion & black pepper cream cheese, salad
Crackers, cottage cheese, ham, olives, gherkins
Crackers & cottage cheese (a very strange thing to be addicted to, I know…)
Pasta with aforementioned cream cheese, bacon, courgettes and mushrooms
Scrambled eggs, toast, Franks hot sauce

five places I’m going

I’m planning a trip to Hull soon
Rich & I are booked into a spa at the end of October
I will probably go to his house in Halifax at some point
Hopefully a day/night out to Manchester/Newcastle. Who’s in?
A friend & I are going to Prague in December

last five books I’ve read

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Q&A by Vikas Swarup
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Smashed by Koren Zailckas
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

five things in my bag

felt purse with an elephant on it
card wallet with a gazillion loyalty cards in it (do I need a Subway card when I live nowhere near a Subway? Of course!)
Moleskine diary
phone & camera
book

five things I do every day

shower
drink coffee
attempt to plan my life
listen to Emmy the Great (no joke)
read blogs

Have a great weekend everyone!

September 29, 2011
by Emily 2 Comments

Indian summer

Being a layabout has its perks when the sun comes out and decides to hang around.

I can devote an afternoon to sitting in the sunshine, reading a book, eating fruit and satisfying my raging Diet Coke addiction.

Taking unnecessary photos of grass.

Yeah, I was pretty warm wearing this. The art of summer dressing evades me at the best of times, let alone when I have been dreaming about wooly tights and wearing a coat. Denim shirt from Oxfam, yellow bird shirt from Primark, skirt from M&Co, dirty feet model’s own. Oh hey mini rainbow in the corner of my picture.

The sky is so blue!

Fun facts: a) it is far too hot to run inside on a treadmill b) Bacardi mojitos are amazing but expensive c) I might be going here at the weekend and I am so freaking excited.

Hope everyone is enjoying whatever weather they’re having.

September 26, 2011
by Emily 5 Comments

Monday

~ I tried to wear my glasses and think of them as a fashion statement rather than an unwieldy hunk of metal mounted on my face. It didn’t work. Contact lenses ftw. I also wore a stripy jumper, black trousers and sunglasses and pretended to be French. This didn’t work either. Underneath all this I wore the prettiest bra in the world. I really wanted to take a picture of it but don’t think it would be appropriate to share on here. Boo. What do you think to my glasses: fashionable or just practical?

~ The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing was really good, and now I’m reading possibly the bleakest book ever.

~ I embarked on a culinary adventure to make banana bread for the first time. After a fiasco with the bread machine when it just wouldn’t stop mixing no matter what I did, I stuck it in the oven and it looks pretty beautiful to me.

~ I’m going to start exercising regularly in an attempt to not feel so lethargic all the time. I never thought I’d miss the uni gym so much.

~ I’m considering a self-imposed magazine ban. They’re expensive and full of pictures of expensive clothes and conflicting messages about weight, healthy, sexuality, careers, happiness etc. I’ll go back to them eventually but for now, they are just not what I need.

~ I went for an evening walk.

September 13, 2011
by Emily 2 Comments

The 5 People You Meet in University Halls

1. The Snob

The Snob will turn their nose up at the halls the moment they arrive, and may not lower it until the day they move out. They will extend an offer of friendship to you with the words ‘Can you believe there are only 10 showers?’ and kick up a fuss when you sit down to eat in the canteen that evening. While they dangle a mushy sausage from their fork, you will see in their eyes the sheer horror that has dawned on them: they have to live here for the whole year. While everyone else adapts to the situation and comes to view the lack of showers and awful food as part of life, The Snob will continue to moan, to tell everyone in earshot how their friend at another uni lives in really nice halls, to visit home at every chance they get. No matter how bad your halls really are: don’t be the snob. Chalk it up to life experience, go to the greengrocers every once in a while, and wear flip flops in the shower.

2. The Waster

The Waster will wave their parents goodbye and immediately whip out a bottle of Jagermeister and a bag of weed. They will be drunk before you’ve unpacked your bedding. They’ll still be partying when the wardens decide a 7am fire drill is necessary. They will continue to view getting wasted as the most important activity long after Freshers week has passed, long after everyone has run out of money, and long after you have sworn you’ll never drink again. (Hint: You probably will.) Their antics will become a standard part of everyone’s conversation – ‘He was running around naked on the ground floor! Says he doesn’t even remember it!’

3. The Over-Dresser

The Over-Dresser (likely to be a girl) is the person who wears nicer clothes to their Tuesday morning lectures than you do on your birthday night out. They can be spotted trotting around the campus library wearing 5 inch heels. You’ll feel a bit sick with envy as they saunter past you looking like they have just stepped out of the pages of Vogue, and you’ll look at your own clothes and wonder if you should start ironing them. When the weather gets colder and you’ve become physically attached to your university crested hoodie and wooly hat, they will produce a vintage faux-fur coat and beret from the back of their cupboard and continue to dazzle. The one day that you’re so hungover you can’t face clothes, even to go to the canteen, is the day that they will be wearing a dress that wouldn’t look out of place at a high society party, and you will die of shame, stood in your fleecy pyjamas clutching a plastic tray of fish fingers and chips.

4. The Skiver

The Waster and The Skiver might be the same person, but not necessarily. The Skiver will go to approximately 10% of their lectures in first year. They will make excuses at first – they missed the bus, they hadn’t been given the right timetable, their alarm didn’t go off – but eventually the excuses will fizzle out and it will become common knowledge that while they may be enrolled in a degree course, they don’t really go to uni. Their lecturers likely don’t know who they are, or know them as the kid who never turns up. They might be called into a meeting to discuss their non-attendance. They might not attend that meeting. Miraculously they will scrape through, pass the year, and you will quietly seethe with anger.

5. The Best Friend(s)

All jokes aside, there’s a chance you will meet some amazing friends in halls. The Best Friend is the person who hammers on your door to make sure you’re not dead after a heavy night. The person who subs you the money for a pizza when you’ve reached your overdraft limit. The person who will sit and watch the entire first series of Gossip Girl with you and never once mention that exam you have on Monday. The Best Friend is the person who will be your friend in your second year, in your third year, and even when you graduate and are sent off into the big wide world to be a responsible adult.

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