Those are my chimney tops.

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We got the email on November 28^th. It quite simply stated the owner would be taking over the property in 2015 and we needed to be out by 22 January 2015. I remember exactly where I was standing down to what I was wearing, black dress, black mottled leopard print tights and my smart camel and black felt jacket which has lapels like Cheryl Cole circa 2013.

All those years. If I could slot in a reference to London 2012 I would cover all the big events that had happened from the base that was my home most securely and definitely of anywhere I’d ever lived since 1997.

I moved into my Deanhaugh Street flat with Laura in March 2012. The week of my birthday. We had looked at the ad for the flat online in the pub below, in the window seat, not realising the bay windows of that pub, Hectors, swung round to meet what would be our front door for two years and mine for another after that.

I didn’t know then it was going to be the first place where I really felt like I belonged, to become my office when I quit my sensible day job and set up a company; a party flat, fitting sixteen people into a kitchen that on a grumpy Tuesday night didn’t seem to have room for two; the place I got into cycling; the place that meant I afford to buy a nice duvet; the place I got round to putting my own framed pictures up on the wall. Laura’s huge tapestry from India pinned up in the huge hall immediately lent warmth and colour. The place I could have a cupboard of all my cosmetics in the bathroom and twelve different moisturizers I never used. It didn’t matter what the flat was filled with as it was mine.

I loved the flat mostly as it was so strange. Long and thin, freezing cold, top top floor and a level above all the other high-street tenements so it felt like one was in the set for chim-chiminy from Mary Poppins. I owned those chimney tops. No one else had that view. From the back rooms, a glimpse at a far off Edinburgh Castle and skittles and layers of houses and flats rising up and up into the city centre, also the side of the flat that caught the sunrise. The front end of the flat, sitting room and the big bedroom looking out onto the busy high street caught the sunset. This meaning twice a day one end of the flat was bathed in the warm, pink light of magic hour and the other end was bathed in the pinky reflection of the sun waxing or waning.

The front end of the flat lent the best people watching of anywhere I’ve ever been let alone lived. If you like watching people – live on a high street or on a street that reaches long into the distance – this flat had both. I remember when friends came to stay when at 2am one night a couple of the staff from the pub below left work and he – out on the street – declared his love for her. We craned our necks out of the window in silence to listen. I got in a lot of trouble for making a noise that may have alerted them to our eavesdropping. I have watched people dancing home with headphones in at 9pm on a Friday after after-work drinks, I have watched men locked out of their flats by flatmates, partners, parents wandering listlessly drunk round in circles before turning round and going back to try their luck at the intercom.

That flat watched the Yes campaign gaining speed. I sat in my front room with the windows open on the evening of the referendum soaking up the carnival of tooting horns and exuberant chatter. Yes’s and No’s sprinkling the windows of the flats and flats and flats stretching down the road.

The night we finally emptied the flat out and moved a Subaru of residual crap round to my friends spare room where we are to pitch for the foreseeable – we watched Chris Nolan’s Intersteller. A film about dimensions, relativity and time and space and home – the story centres on a bookshelf in a home that no one can bare to let go of.

In all of the time and space and possibilities, time moves at a speed relative to activity. Those three years in that flat feel like decades. The eight weeks notice dragged and tripped me up, rendering me incapable of picturing a reality beyond not being in my home. It’s not mad to cry and scream and holler at someone taking your security away. It’s fairly mad not to. I feel a pang when I take a tent down that I’ve stayed in for a weekend. I’ll find a new home, that no-one else wants as it’s weird and long or tall or cold or hot or high or bright or similar to the set of a childhood film if I were able to wander out the windows without falling three floors – but for now I reserve the right to wonder how my sitting room is without me chatting on the phone gazing out the window. If my neighbours are wondering why my bike has gone from the hall. Why my evenings aren’t bathed in a pink light – and who’s going to clamber over the rooftops in their mind, tripping over chimney pots and slipping on tiles, gazing into skylights, sneaking at other people’s top floor lives and disturbing birds’ nests.

Maybe I’ll reserve that right just for me.  In my own dimension.

Grayson's Rise and Fall of the Default Man - this is a no suit situation.

I have just read Grayson Perry’s The Rise and Fall of the Default Man. With the picture in my mind of Grayson’s wild dresses that look like a one of those really fancy bouquets with all the different colours of cellophane wrapped round a hot house of flowers - his discussion of ‘suits’ got me thinking.

I have always been fascinated by our personal costumes – why we don’t call our day-to-day outfits ‘costuming’ I have never known. As it all is – whether we wear the same thing every day to try and look, well, the same every day – or whether we mix it up. Here are three hugely broad ways to generalize UK costuming.

1.    An outfit which is easy to apply again and again and explains a purpose – so uniforms really, but these include suits (THE SUIT) through to a specific choice of band t-shirt, jeans and converse trainers.
2.    A particular style of dressing that allows for a range of dress but does have rules. This can be defined by class, an upper class woman thinks her twinset and pearls is original while she can happily fit in, or it can be burlesque-chic – that kinda 50s look with red lips and tattoos. K Middy is a good example of this; she in essence wears the same dress designed for a conservative voter with a slim waist over and over again. (The one style of dressing all the time is K Middy, not burlesque-chic, although, lord would it be a sweet relief if she did move out of dullsville.)
3.    Someone who literally just wears what they want when they want both regardless and in regard to current trends. They just dress. These are the kind of people when you meet them the second and third time you think you’ve met them before but aren’t sure as they are wearing something that totally counters that first meet. These are ALSO the kind of people when you first see them in jeans and then in a dress and hair pulled up to the sky – you may comment – ‘wow – you look great’ as you had already put them in the converse/skinny jean box at the first meeting.

I think I fit into number 3. YES EVERYONE IS ALWAYS SAYING ‘WOW YOU LOOK GREAT’. They’re not, but I do get surprised looks weekly when I’ve scrubbed up.

Grayson talks about suits for about a third of The Rise and Fall of the Default Man – and that’s where I’m getting. Now, luckily, at the bold wee age of 28, I feel 100% comfortable (83% of the time) in my own skin. This has heightened since I quit the ‘day job’ and chose to run my own life, I have left a system – and though in the arts – a system run very much by men in suits.

Never have I been interested in wearing a suit during my professional life. There is ONE exception to this rule, when I was tired of posing in front of paintings for the papers and considered dressing as Janelle Monae to see if they still wanted ‘girl in suit.’ I didn’t do this. I wore jeans and a parka to muse underneath a Louise Bourgeois Spider instead.

I have never worn or owned a trouser suit, a skirt suit, a grey pleaty thing – except perhaps for school uniform. I did have to wear a tight fitted skirt, shirt, tie and waistcoat when I worked in a five star hotel’s champagne bar, but that all backfired when one day the skirt was so tight I poured boiling hot coffee all over the lap of a be-suited man out for a work do.

I know that when I have strolled into meetings in a holey grey jumper over a ballet style black strappy top and a waist high, thigh high patterned orange skirt – I knew I wasn’t dressed as everyone else. My opinion may not at first have been so valuable for the Default Man and his suits – and that my lively disposition (it’s so Jane Austin no? NAUGHTY LYDIA,) may not initially have endeared me as grey and black could've sans orange and eyeliner – but I was always clean and smart and I was never going to dress that part. I had turned up to the interview for said job in bottle-green boots and a navy dress with a white trim that could only be described as circus-cum-sailor-chic. I also had badly damaged bottle blonde hair.

When I met the Queen and Prince Phillip backed into me at a visit to my work, I wore a black polkadot knee length dress from brick lane, hair spray, eyeliner and bright turquoise heels that I’d grabbed for £7 in Miss Selfridge four years previous. The Queen didn’t ask me to leave for not wearing a suit, nor did the special ops guys I was chatting to as we showed press photographers (all requested to wear suits) around.

I sometimes feel lucky to inhabit my world where I don’t need to, and refuse to dress in a ‘predictable unfussy, feminised version of the male look,’ but hopefully the more meetings and train carriages I sit in working – the less it will matter – and the more people will join me, dressing in WILD variations of some style day-to-day.

Yesterday, on the train down to London, in clashing red ALARM rimmel lipstick and a fluorescent pink jumper from H&M (teamed with skinny jeans and converse) messy hair and stationed between a battalion of men in suits traveling to London for work - ME TOO GUYS, ME TOO – the man next to me offered to get my case down. Now, as a dickhead (not a feminist, as a dickhead, refusing politeness isn’t a feminist action) normally I would say no, but he was in a good spot to grab my bag so I thanked him, and he passed it to me. ‘Woah, that’s light for a mumble mumble…’ I grinned, knowing I had heard what he said, ‘light for a what?’ I questioned. ‘Light for a female’s bag’ he replied. I won’t tell you what I said, I’m sure you can imagine, but I did smile and I did think to myself – ‘well, yes, running my own company and tottering to London for work does open me up to a whole world of really light weight costumes – and not a suit in sight.’

This Referedum is 100% Pure Pop (and songs from the shows)

Never has a place felt more electric. In a matter of hours more of Scotland will head down to the polls than ever have before to cast their vote, make their voice heard, lend a vow and make history.

Never have my dips and delves into my pop back catalogue been so illustrative of the political climate as every song spins a new story on the bloody independence referendum. Not content with making my coffee high a whirlwind of panic about what to do – pop music changes its mind as quickly as I can draw on too much eyeliner and sing along. The romance, the trauma, the tremor of change, the darkness of heartbreak, the joy of new love, the moments between, the sweaty exchange of naughtiness afterwards, our winning popstars and musical mavericks have been writing songs about the referendum for decades. Here are my pick of the Top Seven.

Let’s kick off with a 2002 classic. (No. ONE)

Chill out, what you yellin' for?
Lay back, it's all been done before

SORRY. I wasn’t yelling Avril. I was listening to the excited and invigorating conversations echoing out of Perth, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Ullapool and Edinburgh and seeing how the rest of the world responds. You know someone in AMERICA did a thing on a tele show? Uh huuuuh. Mad ey.

Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else
Gets me frustrated
Life's like this
You, you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honesty

Seems you’re a little confused Avs. At least things are nae ironic for you.

Something has changed within me (No. TWO)
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!

This poetry is lent to us while we are listening to the musical soundtrack from the lauded ‘oh what did happen before Oz to make that witch green?’ Wicked. I think Elphaba has some sound advise for possible ‘YES’ voters.

I'm through accepting limits
'Cause someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change but 'til I try, I'll never know!
Too long I've been afraid of losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love it comes at much too high a cost!

EXCLAMATION MARK. Huh. What a drama.

There’s also a load about looking to the Western sky… so you can either look to the Western SKYE or the NORTHERN sky. Up to you really.

STAY WHERE? (No. THREE)

Alright dudes in the white coats of glory. Endlessly 90s. Endlessly relevant for Davey Camerooooon and his dudes. Also – without being glib – for those that genuinely love Scotland but want to see what this wild rebellion can do to change things without going solo – there are some lovely sentiments.

Baby if you've got to go away
Don't think I can take the pain
Won't you stay another day
Oh, don't leave me alone like this

Don't you know we've come too far now
Just to go and try to throw it all away??????????????????

Probs best to ignore the stuff about ‘I touch your face while you are sleeping’ as it’s a bit creepy and I don’t like the idea of future UK PM Boris Johnson sneaking into my house and doing just that. Though I’m sure Ed Miliband has muttered ‘Though it's all for you that, I do seem to be wrong.’

These duo-banging love-sharing coke-downing dudes have a little to say on the matter. If only to advice voters to ‘open your eyes and LOOK at the day.’ Trust me, all I bloody do is look at the day and indulge myself in a level of panic I've never politically experienced before, bearing in mind I was really freaking scared of David Cameron becoming PM.

Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone. (No. FOUR)
Why not think about times to come,
And not about the things that you've done,
If your life was bad to you,
Just think what tomorrow will do.
Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here,
It'll be, better than before,
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.

Slightly sinister there. I never meant any harm to you but wooooops I may just have discharged that gun.

Ok ok ok ok this is just freaky. A film about sisters who discover they love each other more than the MEN IN THEIR LIVES? Tell me about it. Frozen's Let It Go storms in at No. FIVE.

It’s tricky to really realize this as there’s been a bit of a UK-wide heatwave this week, so there’s nae chance of snow even in the Cairngorms

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seen.
A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I'm the queen.
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.

Let it go, let it go!
Can't hold it back any more.
Let it go, let it go!
Turn away and slam the door.
I don't care what they're going to say.
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway.

It's funny how some distance, makes everything seem small.
And the fears that once controlled me, can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me.
I'm free!

And we continue with a little meta (and much repetition.)

Let the storm rage on! The cold never bothered me anyway...

It gets really cold in the winter. Erm. Salmond, whatcha gonna do about that? JUST ASKING.

The sun'll come out, tomorrow (NO. SIX)
So you gotta hang on 'til tomorrow
Come what may. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow
You're ONLY a day away.

Lord above. No sleep ‘til Brooklyn huh? (NO. SEVEN) Night y'all.

Ten Observations on Abstinence from Alcohol.

Ten Observations on Abstinence from Alcohol.

I am nearing the end of dry January. I’m not really a fan of dry January as a term, or a thing, but now I have experienced it I do understand why it is called what it is. It’s so called as then there’s an end date. 

10. Nothing tastes like alcohol. You can have a lemonade, a really posh one from Waitrose or Sainsbury’s or the Co-op but it just tastes like lemons and sugar. 

9. On the reverse, taste-wise, a glass of wine poured reverentially into a glass, smelt, swirled and sipped, soaks every tastebud like it belongs. Apple juice does not do this, it twangs on some forcefully and then leaves a sweet taste. I like my aftertastes to burn. Or so I now know.

8. Time. Every hour is 60 minutes long and every minute 60 seconds. There is no relaxing of this rule when sober. 

7. My shoulders are up by my ears. Stress is not relived in the traditional way. How now to relieve it?

6. The Wind In The Willows effect. There is a chapter towards the end of Wind In The Willows when Ratty and Mole walk out of the Wild Wood and through a human town. It’s Christmas and families, people, humans generally are gathered indoors. The endless dark of the winter months means the glow is from within, never from without. I am on the outside looking in. I am Ratty, or Mole. 

5. I still can’t get out of bed. Everyone talks about a lightness suddenly aiding their step, the abstinence aid. I have not experienced this. 

4. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Well, I think I did. I was really ready for a break from booze. I have learned to love drinking for the taste, the chat, the mood heightener and deepener. On New Year’s Eve I was so fed up of the stuff that I had to think practically about what I could drink so I would enjoy it, nothing too sweet, nothing too heavy. This was not much fun, and neither do I miss the days where anything went, 'yeah I'll have a glass of Perry' (translate: bottle of Lambrini.) I like that I have learned to enjoy stuff I can and cannot afford and that I could happily share my iota of knowledge about wine and beer with anyone that cares to listen. (Hence the mention of an unoaked chardonnay, not being a ponce, the stuff tends to have a smell of old socks. I quite like that.)

3. Health. I’m not sure my liver knows what’s going on. I definitely am more aware of bits and bobs, but this is frightening. In House they are always hunting the mysterious factor that has caused some mystery debilitation, or Lupus. I worry they will now search for my debilitation and realise that my body requires alcohol to function. Red wine to keep the blood stirring, beer to keep the muscles relaxed, unoaked chardonnay to keep my vision clear, gin to remind me to feel, whisky for a really good debate about nothing. Cider, well, I feel like I could give or take cider having drunk so much apple juice. 

2. I really have no idea what everyone is talking about, this being a good thing. My skin is not any clearer and not all my ailments have magically cured (I don’t really have any ailments but y’know, that’s what clearing out the alcohol is supposed to do.) 

1. We’ve all seen that image of the chicks in a nest, their whole bodies existing to stretch their beak and neck higher over their siblings to get the worm when it flies in from above. That’s my tastebuds. They know something’s missing. I can feel them, jostling and vying for the best position should something glorious tumble past my lips. 

An Open Letter (ish?) to Bridget Christie

I’ve been wondering how to frame my reaction to Bridget Christie’s show A Bic for Her. Bridget mentions in the show if you want to send her an email, you can, but of course then I’d have to ask people for her email and they’d probably say no, so I’m writing this instead, an open letter if you will.

If you’re reading Bridget, many congrats on the Comedy Award nod, lovely to see two nice ladies joining the funny funny funny funny funny funny funny ten men on the list of twelve people.

Bridget’s show is one of the most incredible stand up shows I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen loads of comedians: David O’Doherty, Daniel Kitson, Hannah Gadsby, Susan Calman, David Kay, Tom Bell, Greg Proops, Ellis James, Claudia O’Doherty and Tim Key that make me really really laugh, and lots of others that have raised a chuckle. But last Monday morning, sneaking out of work to queue up and watch Bridget alone, (alone as in I went by myself not alone alone as the queue was really big,) I wasn’t aware what was going to happen. This isn’t a review and this bit is just context. I suppose the idea  is that I’ve seen comedians and laughed at them, and I laughed non-stop through Bridget’s show so it was even more affecting that it was both so funny and bashed away at my conscious like a woman at the door of a men’s-only golf club.

The show was very special for me as I spend a lot of time being nervous, sweaty and explanatorily-annoying about being a feminist.
I’m not in a political movement, I am, I’m not, I am.
I’m not threatened by the patriarchy as I rise above it and don’t let it affect my life. It does, it doesn’t, it does, it doesn’t; or actually maybe it just does as we should all be vocal about it to help those that are unable to be.
I think Caitlin Moran is bang on the money, she’s not, she is, she’s not, she is.
GAH Women’s Hour stop missing the point and asking women in places of power what they’ve had to give up to gain access to the heady heights of sucess, you did, you didn’t, you did you didn’t.

You catch my drift. (If you haven’t caught my drift please give up now OR read on knowing it’s probably not going to get much clearer.)

The brilliant impassioned thing about Bridget Christie’s show, which by the end had brought me close to tears (and although it’s a rousing call, I don’t think her aim is heightened emotions), was that every one of her exhaustions I’ve countered and tried to either ignore or explain away. Ignore or explain away as it’s exhausting to fight all. the. time. One gets so fucking tired of fighting. Saying no, no, no, I don’t feel that’s correct, it’s not fair for you to make that judgement; it’s not right for you to presume anything about me because I’m a woman.

Bridget’s commentary is both so subtle and so clear, her performance so funny and so poignant. The repositioning of Beyonce, she is not a feminist icon, she is role-model. So gut-wrenchingly simple I have no idea how I’ve not managed to put that into words before. How John Inverdale is such a wanker I’m not even going to waste my time wishing him dead…. How much time I have wasted.

Bridget works wonders with the blatant comedy in all the most ridiculous gender prescriptive parts of our society. A pen for girls, yes, because the Bronte’s struggled so hard to write WITH MEN’S PENS. The fact that women were invented ages ago any maybe by now WE SHOULD BE USED TO THEM. The fact that small children can see sexually explicit images of women lathered across newspapers in any old shop EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. And I’d like to add my own onto this, dear men, when you come into my office, the office to which I have left the door open so you can happily come through for a natter no matter your question, creed or countenance, DO NOT PAW ME OR STROKE MY ARM, I AM NOT A CAT.

This is maybe the point at which I should just say go see Bridget’s take on all this, as every scrap of subtly has been etched out by my womanly hormones that made me use caps lock frequently. Or perhaps there’s a simpler explanation, maybe it’s just because I'm not using a keyboard specially designed for women.

My Bling List - Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013

Several years ago, on this blog, I wrote a sulky response to failures at the EIFF.

From an audience member’s point of view, the festival wasn’t about us anymore, and aware as I am how important it is to spoil promoters and industry types, it is important that audiences get a fair deal. Priced out of the festival, I didn’t see a single film in 2011.

2013 seems to be the year OF the audience. Several different price bands for repeat visits is all that’s required to get many people buying tickets for more films than they can realistically schedule into 10 days. With more of a do and less of a moan, here are my selections so far for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The Battle of the Sexes.

Fri 21, Sun 23 June.

A documentary about Billie Jean King taking on former men’s tennis champion and self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs (who ironically I’ve never heard of) after he claimed at the age of 55 he could beat any woman. I don’t know whether I’ll be angry, or enthused, but I’m happy with either. Apparently there’s a great soundtrack… 1973? Expect Suzi Quatro, Bowie and err, Slade…

Blackbird

Tue 25, Thu 27 June.

Without fail the EIFF guide always seduces me with its promo images. And Blackbird was the first image to sell a film to me, 3 pages in. Kinda pathetic. A UK film, Blackbird isn’t the first film to bemoan the loss of talent in villages and the lure of the big city. But as folk music is both wrecking-ball bashing (Mumford and Blah) and beautifully seeping back (village open mic nights) into the common consciousness, I couldn’t resist the idea of it seeping into the film festival as it should be, played by people that have lived and learnt. Let's be aware of the legacy of older generations – and how if we don’t share their stories now, they won’t be around forever, a strong sentiment for celluloid.

The Bling Ring

Sat 22, Sun 23 June.

There’s been a lot of press coverage of Sofia Coppola’s new film. So there’s little to add here. Two weekends ago, battered by hen dos, weddings and weekends away, I spent the whole Sunday catching up on films, including Coppola’s 2010 Somewhere, which is absolutely superb, subtle, self-aware and a real insight. Looking forward to the follow up.

Comrade Kim Goes Flying

Sat 22, Thu 27 June.

Triumph in adversity on trapeze? What’s not to love?

Another gorgeous image pulled me to this, coal miner Kim Yong-Mi and her dreams of joining the circus becoming reality. A reassuring premise for the PR who dreams of joining the circus.

The copy is like candyfloss. We’ll see if the film turns out to be full of air or real spun sugar.

The Great Hip Hop Hoax.

Wed 26, Thu 27, Fri 28 June.

Billy Boyd doing some kind of Hip Hop? In.

Keep Smiling. (Gaigimet)

Fri 28, Sat 29 June.

Georgia Mother of the Year 2010. I’ve never seen a Georgian film before, and this seems like a stirring premise. Could this highlight the twisted nature of our obsession with the mums in popular culture? The Dutchess HAS A BUMP. Stacey Soloman HAD A FAG. Kerry Katona WRONG RIGHT WRONG RIGHT. Katie Holmes LEFT HUSBAND TO PROTECT CHILD IN LILY POTTER TYPE STAND OFF.  Coleen Rooney WHY ALWAYS K? Everyone POST BABY BODIES. Everyone ON THE SCHOOL RUN. Everyone HAS TO HAVE IT ALL. Everyone KEEP SMILING.

The Sea.

Sun 23, Mon 24 June.

An adaptation of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel by John Banville. Always interesting to see novel adaptions without the $300mil price tag, and it wouldn’t be the EIFF without at least one Irish film under my belt. 

So that's the initial list of tickets bought on one of the excellent bulk ticket deals. 

I will attempt to wang on on here about some of the above - if you'd like to come with me to any of these films, tweet me and I'll email you the dates I'm going.

Stating the tweein' obvious

I don't want to discuss the 'self' as a brand, (is it all not exhausting enough?) but I want to ponder twitter, and the throw away snippets flung out onto the internet.  Tweets are honest accounts of thoughts, reactions and opinions - but as fine-tuned ponders or vents, they present a very reflective but never entirely true self. Either honesty, or spin, and with the opportunity to get it right first time.

If I was tweeting as a large organisation using front-facing third-person correspondence, 140 characters would be a considered reflection of that organisation's goals and 'character'. The handle is entirely accountable for the bigger picture, and tweeting in third person places the correspondence one away from the respondent. This 'comment' therefore requires sensible and considered content, which can absolutely be light-hearted and informal, but does need to reflect the organisation as a whole. So while shouty jokes about being unable to pick an exhibition to feature on a museum account (i.e 'as they're all ace') is fine, but a joke about 'oh my god are we serving horse to the queen' at a theatre hosting royalty isn't ever going to fly as the news agenda is going to swoop in, no matter how much silly nonsense it really is. 

When tweeting as myself some these filters just don't need to apply, it's not likely I've fed an economy burger to royalty is it? So if I tweet it, it's not running a risk of news or upset. I'm aware of the nature of tweets becoming news, or being libelous, so clearly my twitter account does neither - it goes without saying. In the same way that if I spoke to the who or whatever I'm responding to, I would be ready to discuss my personal reaction to the content. Fair's fair innit. And by nature I question, so my twitter account should too no?

I have been very surprised by the reaction, where after a tweet, offline, there has been an assumption I would not be willing to discuss my comments. Hiding behind a tweet? (My twitter handle is my full name.)  I've had brilliant and enlightening discussions with many people on twitter, I know the medium and I'm ready to explain myself if and when. For a million and one reasons being totally honest and uncensored on social media is a TERRIBLE idea. From unsolicited monologues about a new baby through to propaganda and bullying and much worse, we should all be trained to use social media responsibly. But responding to a situation one finds oneself in shouldn't be an issue. Least of all something you should fear will be received as a cowardly, sly response. One is entirely accountable, and I'm always ready to be, and ready to hear the other side to the story... otherwise, I wouldn't post. I'd call someone and have a natter.  

I always strive to be honest online, and although I do change my mind on comments before I press tweet and consider the response to every comment, but I've never expected tweeting to be something to hide behind for a 'real' character? It's a jungle out there when considering the amount of brand identities, the celebrity waves and strategic communications, but I'm talking about many accounts just using twitter as a (maybe a little better spoken, and more precise) extension of self. I'm also always going to be ready to defend my comments; why else would I say them? There's no need for anyone to worry that I'm a monkey sitting in a bin of banana skins heaving at the confusion and exaltation of having EATEN ALL THE BANANAS.  If you're pondering my waffling, don't. Either chuckle, or move on.