Caroline Darke @carolinedarke - Tumblr Blog

Reasons Chad Evans should be allowed to be a professional footballer (as seen on Twitter)

“He can’t do anything else”

Yes, he can. Everyone can do something else. May come as a surprise, but we don't all do our favourite thing in the world as a job. We seemingly accept that thousands of women and men should spend their time doing banal jobs on little pay with no security; I have little concern that Chad can’t do his first choice job, which is essentially an incredibly well paid hobby. No one is stopping him playing football; I'm sure he will find it a great way to spend evenings and weekends.

“He has done his time”

No he hasn't, he is out on licence.

He extends her 'time' every time Chad talks to the press or posts another defence on his website. Chad’s decision making and behaviour affects her ability to rebuild her life. He has the freedom to mould a new life for himself, away from cameras, away from speculation, away eventually from judgement. His face will be forgotten. She doesn't have that liberty. We decide when she will be left in peace.

“He has been punished enough”

Well, firstly, that’s up for debate. Secondly, it’s not simply about punishment. It’s about the example we set. I’m not suggesting we lock people up and throw away the key, a black cross on the door and stand with pitchforks in the garden reigning judgement on their house. I’m all for rehabilitation and second chances. I wish we were better at it. But that second chance has no place in the public arena. There are thousands who not only think rape is the woman’s fault but think rape is a joke, funny, not a big deal (see Dapper and other laugh a minute types) By giving Chad a place back in football, we provide fuel to these people's opinions, we validate them.

“He deserves a second-chance”

It is different from burglary, from fraud, from buying a gram of coke and doing it while driving 100mph on the M25. It just is. It’s a violent crime that wreaks havoc at the heart of what makes us human. Our trust, our willingness to let others see us as vulnerable, to see our bodies, to hear our thoughts and fears - that trust and intimacy that makes life matter. Rape ruins that. Stains remains on how cruel, inhumane and horrifying humans can be to one another.

Friends, family, individuals can decide on second chances. Behind closed doors, privately. Second chances shouldn't mean being celebrated, little boys having your name on their shirt.

“He might be innocent”

He has been found guilty by our justice system. His appeals have been thrown out. His insistence on innocence is not our concern.

I think there is a good chance he actually does believe he is innocent; thousands of men still think rape is only possible when you drag a stranger into an alley, that you can’t rape a woman who willingly walks into a hotel, who might kiss you, who might take her clothes off, might even fucking marry you. You can still rape her.

That alone makes it this all the more important.

He posted a video of her going into the hotel with a "you decide" caption. Indeed, he is right, we do decide. I hope we make the right decision.

Wear Skin Cream

San Francisco. A pricey hotel bed that was meant to be shared but is mine alone. Far from wrapping myself in the sheets and pretending to be in a film: steam from the streets, grids on the windows and a grey softened silhouette of skyscrapers - I just felt sick.

I can't remember how I got to bed. The room cost more than my rent back in London; going back to debt, an off/on boyfriend and a job writing sentences to sell stuff to people who don't need anything.

My tights were up under my boobs, my heels on and my hair was wet and stuck to my face. I have a memory of jumping in a hotel pool the night before, but the edges were smudged and the watercolours running into one another.

It was my brother's wedding. His second wedding. It was beautiful. My mother joked how long it would be before I had the same. I laughed but forgot to tell my face.

I left, paid with a credit card that would be the chain round my neck for months to come. Walked through the city, suitcase dragging, making different sounds with each type of stone.

"Hello beautiful, oh my goodness, your eyes, oh my oh my. You are a treasure"

A man in a neatly buttoned shirt; he looked like he belonged in an all white hotel room eating grapes. He was outside a golden palace selling skin cream.

I smiled.

Dragged in the shop. Caught myself in the mirror. Red and dead eyes. He rubbed the cream on my skin, complimenting my accent, my cheekbones, my eyebrows (which I knew was a lie because they were like unplucked splatterings of iron filings). I agreed to buy it.

He said I needed a skin mask to tackle the grease on my forehead. I'm sold. He was making me giggle. I didn't feel invisible any more. He threw in a foot cream for free because he 'liked me'. He asked if I used 'night cream', told me at my age 'all women wore night cream' and slapped it on. Call me an amateur, but there seemed little difference between the night and day cream but I desperately wanted to be like the adult American women who smell nice, so I bought both.

He offered me 50% off the matching eye cream. A small slither of translucent gel that probably wouldn't bleach out the map of red lines but he "doesn't just do this offer for anyone".

5 gold boxes. $300 later. I smiled, and blushed, and pretended to be the kind of woman who spends hundreds of dollars on things that go on cotton wool. I walked out, down the street, gold bags swinging at my knees, whipping hair and body round the corner and wept. Out loud. Weep like no one's watching. Wet sticky face no cream could fix.

My credit card rejected when buying lunch at the airport. And I have my first wrinkle.

Irritations #1

Saying something absolutely fucking hilarious on Twitter and it being as much use as whispering it into a wet sponge at a thrash metal gig.

People who open the door for you when you’re miles away and you half run, half wobble towards them, holding a smile and awkward eye contact, as you stretch to get a door you could have probably opened all by your little self

People who shut the door in your face.

Elusive facebook posts.

People who respond to elusive facebook posts asking what they mean

Being drawn into discussions about Russel Brand

Russell Howard - if he was at your local, he'd make you smile while you waited to be served. He is not TV funny.

People who bake

People who bring cake into the office and insist on you having a piece.

Running for the bus, missing it and pretending you're galloping like an overweight foal for no reason whatsoever

Having one boob bigger than the other and apparently being unable to accept this fact. I like to check this is still the case, every morning, in the shower, forever.

Going to have a poo at work (because you HAVE to), settling down, and someone comes in and goes into the cubicle next to you. And takes ages to wee. The silence in that moment. Two humans have never hated each other more.

Never having an umbrella. Do all fully grown functioning adults carry umbrellas every day. Where do they all come?

Not getting one answer right on University Challenge yet you’re old, and read books, and talk to people and all that stuff.

Your face masterfully managing to have both spots and wrinkles at the same time.

Knowing those first wrinkles will never go; indeed the first wrinkle is the deepest

Still not being able to read an article about the Middle East to the end without getting bored

Being pretty sure that makes me a shit person.

Pomperi

Types of Cyclist

Lycra Dads: cameras on helmets, leggings, yellow high res jackets, sporty tiny backpack, panniers and a plastic water bottle with three types of spout. Drinks protein shake after cycling to the corner shop.

Quaint Queens: girls who drink their gin out of tea cups, pick up skirts from stalls, think anything old looking is vintage; with stained page curled books in their back pocket. They ride 1950s spindly bikes with long flapping skirts getting caught in spokes, floppy dark purple hats that hinder their vision. They bake despite being wheat intolerant. Storming through traffic in central London on a Friday night. After too many tea cups

Spanish Hot Boys: young, healthy, one-sided shaved heads, shorts in the winter, tattooed arms, hands with letters on the fingers that are nowhere near the handlebars, white vests, hair bands across the forehead. They paint, they deliver gluten free pizza, they don’t wear helmets and they cycle fucking everywhere.

Hippy Mums: multiple smudgy heads of children popping out a wicker basket at the back of the bike; mummy cycles slowly, dipping through cars, fringe flapping. Possibly a tote bag with some potatoes and carrots that still have the green tops bought from a market that has blackboards and men with real cockney accents rather than ones just for films. They don't pay enough attention to the road. Luckily, they tend to stay in Hackney.

Weekend Wonders: similar to Lycra Dads but more aspirational. They cycle at the weekend, outside London, for fucking miles and when they whiz past you at a roundabout at rush hour, they want you to know that. Serious helmet, streamlined, possibly a shaven leg or arm yet often unshaven in the facial area, stubble like a man who camps willingly, tools, collector of carabiner clips and food in sachets (necessary when cycling in the mean lanes of the home counties).

The Chaps: pin-striped business types with their trousers tucked into red socks, redder cheeks, leather shoes they actually shine. Wobbling wheels, bellies popping pink shirts and a badly fitted chinstrap that seemingly slices through skin.

New Girls: started to cycle on the way to work to lose weight. It fits her daily routine. Pencil skirts restricts movement, chapped knees under tan-coloured tights, slip on shoes and an ill-fitting helmet. Heels in a bag. Mini perfumes and spare deodorant. She takes the back roads to avoid the lorries, has three locks, two spare keys and a book on bike maintenance.

Kidults: they come in teams of three or four. There may even be more than one kidult per bike. All flailing limbs, smart phones and dumb caps. Often seen shouting at one another, as they spread out across three lanes of traffic, swooping in to join together collectively as the traffic slows, like synchronised swimmers who jump red lights and love to go on the pavement.

It's New Year's Day and, if you're anything like me, you were supposed to go to the gym and start eating healthier. If, instead, you ate fifteen pancakes and are now watching TV, never fear — even the famous had flaws they wished to fix. Marilyn Monroe's resolutions? "Turn her life around."

"Try to enjoy myself when I can - I'll be miserable enough as it is"

School lunch queues. Networking events. And now Twitter.

Twitter is like a networking evening that follows you home.

That moment when you go to a ‘work thing’ and you realise everyone somehow knows one another, they met at conferences, got drunk together, go to lunches and launches together. Late to the party, late to Twitter. I can hear tumbleweed.

I am determined to talk to someone. I hover by a group, shoulders the wrong side of the circle. Laughing at an unfortunate moment, going to the loo to at least appear to have purpose; doing that thing where you open your mouth to talk but realise it’s not your time yet so you've just opened your mouth really widely with no sound. You look like a fish slowly gasping for breath. And charm.

This is how it feels when you watch from afar as Caitlin Moran discusses a Huffington Post piece with Caroline Criado Perez and Hugo Rifkind ridicules something to Grace Dent's joy as she jumps on board with well-worded wit and they all chortle and LOL and RT and Favourite and Follow each other in a big back rubbing love-in. And all the while, you and hundreds of others try their utmost to jump on the banter bandwagon, spouting some sycophantic banal shit, some of it weird and unsettling and some of it actually funny, or insightful or interesting. Whatever it is - we are waving our hands and shouting our sentiments into a vacuum where people can’t hear you tweet.

It’s like being in the lunch queue at school when it feels like the people just in front and just behind are having a really great time. It’s always silent where I choose to sit.

You wander around, desperate for someone to talk to just to appear like you belong. You end up at the bar with a man who is at the wrong event but is having a beer anyway. It is the equivalent of my followers increasing but them consisting of Porta Rican DJs, dads from the deep south, and 17 year old girls with Harry1D in their name, you look more popular but the one-liner with a corker of an Ed Balls pun is probably not of much interest to those listening.

Clt. Alt. Delete. Repeat.

New Year. Fresh Starts.

I once woke up with a chip in my ear. Not even one of the good types, from a place that sells cod by a man in stripes, but a thin little chip from Chicken Cottage, that comes in a flimsy orange box with a soggy bottom. Rock bottom.

Tried to open my eyes but they were encrusted with unwashed make-up, and a head that was swimming in tar. No sheet on the bed. Not even a pillow. A cushion, like the ones that are meant for sofas, they're a different shape. That shit matters. Grown ups know what is a cushion and what is a pillow.

Monday morning, or any given Sunday, Saturday, Tuesday - I stand in front on the mirror. This particular morning, removing a chip from my ear, remains of the stain, remains of the day, night, coming into my mind. Shuddering at thoughts of misspoken words, broken heels and hearts and dancing on sofas that belonged to strangers. No more of this shit.

Tomorrow - I start afresh. Life hits rock bottom 40 times a year; the films promise that feeling down is following by redemption and a montage of motivation and self-improvement. Yet my rock bottom are more like little pebbles of repetitive and damaging behaviour. I eat, drink and smoke all that is left and leave my pants on the floor with abandon, comforted by the knowledge that tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of my life. Positive in the way only posters of sunsets and faded pastel pink quotes and filters can be.

And yet of course the sheer number of fresh starts of reading a book a week, eating raw food, learning Spanish and cooking things grown-up enough to freeze, demonstrates that no one fresh start has stuck.

I can’t pinpoint the moment when the mind decides to have a little civil war and the battle is lost and the wine is in my mouth and the fried chicken in the lap. But there is a moment, it happens, every time.

Feminist Idols

I grew up with a head-strong sister more interested in books than boys. She bought me The Whole Woman when I was 14. I soaked it up; feeling unfamiliar frustration and anger at the words on the page. I went to an ambitious school in which career advisers talked about law, finance and management. But Germaine’s words didn’t feel like fiction; male acceptance of me, with my messy hair, sturdy legs and awkward walk, was more important than A’s on the page.

I grew. I read Germaine, Naomi, Simone, Natasha. I started a feminist book club at university - living a middle-class liberal life’s wet dream.

I became a young adult. I read Caitlin. I started to follow Kelly Oxford, Caroline Criado-Perez, Lena Dunham.

I wrote and sent fan mail to Barbara Ellen. She didn't write back.

I took every word to heart. Card-carrying, put it on a t-shirt, feminist.

Yet, when I went to bars and a man was more interested in a friend, I felt envy. When I saw a picture of a female celebrity with cellulite, I looked twice. I cut out carbs. I dyed my hair blonde. I feigned vulnerability. I giggled at unfunny jokes, faked orgasms and flirted with men I had no interest in.

From the academic: Germaine, Natasha, Natalie. To the enviable: Caitlin, Barbara, Kelly.

The male gaze, male validation continued to rule my heart, if not my head. My glass ceiling was not restricted to an office; it was part-self-imposed, part-societal, and it ruled my emotional and personal sense of self.

The female writers who narrated my development were angry, articulate; they also spent time at parties, launches and lunches on expenses; speaking on TV, loving husbands, shiny children and healthy pay packets for discussing everything from Instagram filters to Islam. I related to their words, their feminism and writing was aspirational. Women who had it all: but my experience was, is, messier, muddier and I failed, and fail, to get it right. As a woman. As a human.

Rap gets a bad rap

Rappers encouraging men to tie up their girlfriends, fling them in a river, chain them to a bed, cut them, slash them, or slap around a hoe till she falls off that bar stool - all seems most unsavoury.

But I don't think listening to a song about guns and violence from your bedroom in Hampshire is going to make you pop over your girlfriend's house when she's having her tea, kidnap her, put her in the trunk (it does change language) and drive your Nissan into the river. She only ate your Ginsters pie, she's not that annoying and you probably wouldn’t love spending the rest of your life eating your dinner at 4.30pm in prison.

I think the most violent sentiment in rap is shocking, but I don't believe it persuades men to commit terrible violent crimes.

However, from being forced to listen to Kiss by my nephew, there seems to be an undeniable and entrenched bitterness that does truly affect the way men see women. Rappers don't like women very much and neither should you.

Hoes ain’t loyal. Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks. Golddiggers. Sluts causing chaos. Dirty bitches waitin to trick you.

(All real lyrics)

Boys are hard done by it seems. This notion that women are out to trick, cheat and steal is rife throughout rap. Men giving all to a woman and getting nothing but receipts and deceit in return. Like the hoes they are.

When this anger, this outrage at being apparently mistreated is sung through the airwaves on a daily basis, it breeds young men who feel women rejecting their advances is a personal attack. They ain't going to stand by while a bitch takes them for a ride, they're going to drink a bottle of whiskey and call them a slag. Rap teaches young men to put pride and ego above all else and berate and belittle any woman who threatens that, whether she means to or not.

SmugLife Cyclists

Cyclists - you have the following:

Strength: the first hour of the day, I am so weak. I have ‘morning strength’. I can’t be bothered to make proper coffee, I can’t be bothered to wipe the sleep from my eyes, sometimes having a poo is too much fucking effort. Yet you lot - within an hour of peeling yourself from a warm bed, you are peddling a large metal instrument, pumping sleeping muscles as you move your body weight through the streets. Respect.

Bravery: I do not cross the road unless the electronic green man beckons me to go. How you dare to dip and dive in between blundering buses, chaotic cabs and lorries running late. Thrashing those pedals round round-abouts, pretending to be equal to the big metal monsters with angry, distracted drivers who probably hate you a little bit. No gap too small, no junction too big.

Moral Fortitude: while all us mere mortals trundle to work in machines that gussle gases or fuel; you travel on muscle power alone. Your journey does not emit anything. If more of us got on two wheels, we’d probably offset China or something.

You’re all of the above. But boy don’t you know it.

Cameras on your head; I don’t know any other type of person who goes around with a camera on their head just in case they are wronged.

The weird shaky thing you do at red lights (when you stop): it seems that the holy grail of cycling is never having to put your feet on the ground. A steep hill - pedal up it. A narrow gate - pedal through it. A red light that you need to stop at for a good minute - you put your bum in the air, feet in pedals and waver from side to side, wobbling.

Unlike your feet - which must remain in the pedals at all times, your hands should do almost anything else other than stay on those handlebars. Text message - check it. Hate this song - change it. Look good in lycra - instagram it. If you can do these things with both hands and sit bolt upright and stare into the mid distance with ear phones in - all the better.

Oh - and the pavement is not yours. That is for us two feet types. Hearing a bell from behind, as you jump from side to side, guessing which way to leap to. Sometimes, I cower.

I used to write a resolution every new year to get on my bike - but every time a sweaty smug person walks in the pub taking their helmet off - I know it is one past time that will I am happy to have pass me by. Ringing its bell.

Rise of the enviable feminist

Feminists can wear lipstick. Feminists can be boys, men, Ed Miliband. They can have husbands, children, a desire to make chutney.

They can also be enviable creatures. Feminists and feminism became a brand in 2014 - a brand that many hung from flagpoles outside beautiful Georgian townhouses in North London as they cash cheques from The Times, instagraming their children’s nativity play and tweeting about recipes for gluten free pasta bakes.

The rise of the feminist brand ambassadors: not only smart, forthright, and with the mad idea that equality should not be an aspiration, but an expectation.

They are not perfect stepford wifes or paper thin celebrities whose success depends on the Mirror - they tweet about their misfortunes, they write about anger, disappointment and they can talk about fiscal policy and fishnets in the same breath.

But their mess is like Kate Moss’s hair - it’s untidy, its unruly, but it looks fucking awesome.

Caitlin et al have become the celebrities of the liberal middle class 30 something - we read the books of struggling adolescence and waistbands but now we see cute kids, leafy streets, supportive husbands, lunches and lipstick.

Being a feminist is trickier when your life is messier and your morals muddier. When there are no kids crawling in your egyptian cotton bed in the morning but mice crawling in the skirting boards. When you spend Fridays in a bar trying to find something to stare at on your phone when your prettier, skinnier mate gets swallowed up by adoring arseholes who you would hate to sleep with but hate their indifference more.

Bridget Jones was so successful as women could relate to her: she was a reality we all knew. Apart from the fancy media job, the West London flat that she lives in by herself (a piece of fortune in London only known to daughters of sheiks and divorcees), the impossibly good looking, supportive and patient friends, black cab rides and the fact that two men with strong jaws and kind eyes are fighting over you in the street. Apart from all of that - she was relatable before she got ridiculous (Thailand etc etc), She had a vision of what she wanted to be and failed. The inability to follow through on the aspiration and vision you have set yourself; letting down the person you were meant to be everyday.

Trying

People really fucking try.

The girl sauntering with the powdery pink skirt, 1980s tshirt, with white cotton socks and brogues. The boy with the tattoos and the crew cut, vest and carefully thought out cigerette. The businessman with the illfitting pinstripe suit that lets you see the shape of his balls when he sits, but hides the shape of his character from his own wife. To the dyed blonde woman with perma tan legs and heels that pinch.

To the person who runs for the tube even when they hear the beeps of the door shutting, just to be one minute quicker.

The person willing to network with a cheap glass of free white wine in a tiny glass to make small talk with strangers and hover, hoping to be invited in.

The exhausting every day. The early rise to be in the gym before 8am. The lunchtime spanish class. The three course dinner of raw food. The bars that berate.The pubs with unpronounceable beers. The job that twists you and contorts you for every little last squeeze of effort

More friends. More money. More clothes. More sleepless nights of wondering if you could be thinner, a winner. The millions wasted on self-help books and classes to tell you blueberries are better than burgers. The yoga classes with lithe bending bodies.

The joggers that go round and and around

The diet plans of solely satsumas, the credit cards caressing your wallet begging you to buy into a life you can’t afford, the long tube journeys to drinks you don’t want to sip, the make-up that makes you, the adverts promising dreams you don’t remember having.

It astounds me we don’t all sit around in our own filth, or in a field, or in a tent hell-bent on destruction. That we continue to try for a life we know, we insist, is just the corner. And things will be easier then. The new fresh resolutions, resolute in our determination that if they could just lose the pounds, increase the pounds, pound a fitter woman, man - that things would turn out for the better, and we’d be wetter for life, glistening in our own self-made greatness that was directed and taught by others, smothered in wishes not of our own making.

Trying, tying the pieces together to create a picture of perfection without any way of knowing what that means or tastes like.

"Can you be an adult and spend an hour before breakfast looking at Instagram accounts of girls you will never meet?"

Bad Dates #1

I woke up, with one of those hangovers that feels like it might honestly be your last day. You open your eyes to the bright light of mid-morning, and the pain lands like someone has dropped a small volvo on your head, and everytime you pick that heavy rusty head of yours up - the pain throbs and throngs like you might be sick.

When I was at school, I remember in chemistry learning about slag: a substance rotten to the core, involved when brewing iron, and men in orange suits would scrape it off with what looked like massive kitchen spatula.

It felt like that mixture was trapped between my skull and my brain - slag slopping and sliding, air bubbles of pain popping every time I moved.

I tried to remember getting home the night before. I looked down and saw a black clingy dress marked with deodorant but smelling of shit. Handbag soup of tobacco and pound coins spilling onto the floor and a half finished red stripe on the bedside table.

I groped around for my phone, closing one eye to focus. It grumbled back into life.

One message

“It was great to meet you last night. Do you want to go for that dinner we talked about? Tomorrow? I know how much you like sushi :)”

The vision of him snapped into my slaggy head in an instant. Checked shirt. Face from a boyband, brain from university challenge. Crooked teeth. We talked.

I remember nothing else.

Over the moon like a cow on heat - I rolled around, ignoring the slipping and sliding of the pain bubbles, now venturing down to my stomach which felt like a lava lamp of rubbish.

Two days later, I found myself, shaking, smoking, texting a friend as I nervously wait for ten minutes to appear late before walking into a smart soho sushi palace.

This was it. Two years of being a drunk messy single girl and this was my chance. Happiness. Success. Respect. All in the hands of a young man in a hoodie with bad teeth.

I walk in, nervously tottering on shoes too small for my feet as wide as a my smile. I looked around waiting for the future boyfriend/husband/father of my children/grandfather of my grandchildren/uncle of my neice/friend to my friends/confidant/best friend....

What the ACTUAL FUCK?

A man - I have never ever seen before in my life jumped up

“I am so glad you came”

A thin, grey face with sunken eyes and a beard as long as my stare gaped at me full of hope and delight.

I have never seen him before in my life. Ever.

It turns out the hours between crooked teeth/checked shirt and crawling home on a blurry sea of amnesia - I met someone else. I kissed someone else. I told someone else I liked sushi. This man was sitting right in front of me. I ran away and my life was ruined. Forever. At 23.

#WorstDates #Hungover #Dating #Single

SOLD OUT. If anyone missed out on the chance to spend £900 on this leather clutch - they can have my old pencil-case for £50.

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Caroline Darke