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@remymillar-blog
SO.
After four years of having this blog and doing very little blogging, I think it’s perhaps over due to call it a day.
But fear not, you 8 (or is it 9? I lose count…) followers. I’m starting anew now that we’ve passed the cliché of a New Year’s resolution. I have a nom de plume, a shiny new URL, and a promise to update it much more than thrice a year.
I hope to see you there (here).
Remy X
The Remy Show turned 4 today!
Write Drunk, Edit Sober?
I’ve been on a hiatus from writing while I took on an apparently more sensible project: an internship. However, now that that has come to an underpaid end, I’m giving attention to my blog with renewed energy.
Let me elaborate:
Having taken up an internship, whose 9-5 hours was such a shock to my graduate body clock that after I left work each evening, I crawled straight into bed with a damp flannel on my forehead to sooth screen induced hallucinations of reports, spread sheets and pie charts. That, coupled with my first taste of (free!) corporate alcohol, I was confused as to why my recent drunk behaviour had involved me slurring admiration of all the fat cats at the office party instead of sitting down and being articulate.
So, whilst on a break from some market research, I sought consolation in researching a favourite quote (‘write drunk, edit sober’) hoping that in context it would elaborate on why I hadn’t written an intoxicated masterpiece in the stationery cupboard at a work-do.
The quote comes from a book called Reuben Reuben by Peter De Vries, although the phrase is often wrongly attributed to Ernst Hemingway (perhaps because he famously liked a drink or five.) I typed the title into Amazon to find a second-hand, first edition copy with a cover illustration that sold it to me. (The copy that arrived was a little different to the love heart/milk maid/cockerel I was promised – luckily I’m a design graduate with an appreciation for typography).
“Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.”
The quote I knew has been modernised and abridged; the original passage has (as I’d hoped) enlightened me as to why my masterpiece has yet to materialise in the notes of my iPhone at 3am in a kebab shop.
I’ll keep you posted.
On Skin
I lie on the plastic covered blue lights, and think about my olive skinned French mother as the lovely splodges of sun damage appear on my cheeks. Fury builds irrationally for being born also to a very pale Englishman, who I have decided purposefully ruddied my would-be olive skin.
Yesterday I had a facial. When it was over, still naked and swaddled in towels in an electrically heated bed, Holly handed me a glass of water and said solemnly, ‘Your skin is so dry,’ her eyes filling with empathetic tears, ‘that I couldn’t even squeeze the blemishes because I’d damage your skin.’ I told her about my sunbed habit and how I cleanse my face with Asda baby wipes. She pursed her lips, advised me to take Omega-3, 6 and 9 supplements, and sold me seven overpriced products to use in a thrice-daily skin routine.
Holly’s prescription oil capsule is doing wonders to help fry my face.
The root of my obsession with being tanned could be blamed on a number of motivations. The buttery hair and olive skin combination of the wealthy Notting Hill youth, whether it was an exotic parentage or expensive trips to the Maldives. It could have been summers in the Mediterranean seeing shrivelled Italian women working the leathered look. I would look down at my white body and its newly burgeoning curves, squeezed into a too-small blue bikini, with thick black leg hair covering pale limbs, the version of a beach body I had developed felt beyond inferior. Or it could be that my brother’s skin is darker than any supposed Caucasian I know. In the summer, my mother congratulates him on becoming ‘Pakisanti coloured’. She also denies any accusations of infidelity with a good Middle Eastern friend, around the time of Jack’s conception.
As it was, I was born alabaster, and I’ve had to train my skin to learn how to absorb tan. I’ve put in hundreds of hours of sweating on sticky, sand ridden sun loungers, and then further hours cheating on winter by having an affair with London’s Electric Beach.
‘Tanning beds are bad for you, you know,’ a friend informs me, as he sips a Coca Cola and smokes a cigarette. Obviously the association of skin cancer with tanning beds is immense, but they can’t be solely to blame for the increase in melanoma in the UK. Perhaps it has something to do with the few weeks a year that the Brits (who become so infamously red when abroad) see the sun, and feel like they wouldn’t have any proof of their holiday if they stopped themselves from burning. For people like us who live so far up the northern hemisphere that the sun often seems like a conspiracy theory invented by Physics teachers, perhaps this attitude is understandable.
Sunbeds are actually hugely beneficial for suffers of seasonal affective disorder, eczema and psoriasis, acne, and are a great source of vitamin D (required for calcium absorption, which prevents cancer). I sound deeply biased, but I have had most skin conditions known to dermatologists (and some which aren’t), and I’ve found that sunbeds are a failsafe way of improving my skin.
As a newborn in hospital, I was so compliant that I was used as the demonstration baby in the ‘How to Bath A Baby’ class. One cause of eczema is thought to be over washing, so the midwife at Queen Charlotte’s could be to blame for my skin troubles. I’ve been force fed Chinese herbs, fooled by homeopathy, and bought every kind of steroid, moisturizer, and sun cream available. Cleaning products have been blamed, so has towel sharing, laser hair removal, fabric softener. With 22 years experience of eczema, I’ve learn to manage it with a combination of Piriton, Balneum Oil, and Double Bass (which is a scent free, white jelly lump that comes in a huge transparent pot with a pump and a plastic purple podium for it to stand on, as if having medical moisturizer wasn’t already humiliating enough.)
Then I had something that I affectionately referred to as my ‘Dalmatian’: smooth white patches that appeared all over my torso, before creeping down my arms and legs. Despite kind words from artist friends claiming that they thought my markings were ‘beautiful and interesting’, I was about be an unwillingly patterned human. The first dermatologist told me it was a harmless fungus called pityriasis versicolour that would be gone with the use of a stinking orange shampoo. After 2 years, Dalmatian remained, and I was told it wasn’t actually a fungus. The word vitiligo was being thrown around in Harley Street, and I imagined I had only a few years left until I started to look like Michael Jackson. When the appointment came for a skin biopsy was made after vitiligo was ruled out, my Dalmatian had mysteriously vanished, so no sample was taken. It came back unfailingly the next year along with my tan, and frustrated with the top Harley Street specialist (notably male) not living up to their reputation, my mother solved the mystery using her basic knowledge of search engines and the internet: it was caused by the Pill.
After various other skin traumas—angular stomatitis (or as I affectionately called it, ‘Mouth Grow’), cheese induced body rashes, hacking at verrucae with razors, teenage acne, backne, and chestne, digging out ingrown hairs—I came to really appreciate how clear skin made me feel.
Perhaps my complex is influenced by my mother’s genetic jackpot skin, coupled with her sixth sense for any changes in anyone’s skin. It’s the evidence she uses for claiming that someone looks ‘shagged out’ and I often hear her say, “God, she’s aged,”. Despite never having any cosmetic work done, she is constantly threatening to; she plucks at her eyelids and enjoys watching the skin melt slowly back into place, and announces that she wants the breasts that I apparently destroyed during breastfeeding to be cut off.
When faced with the sun, she coats her face with a thick layer of factor 50, and lies there with her mask of cream, as if challenging the sun to affect her. This is probably compensating for the years where she faced the sun with olive oil and tin foil.
I choose to wear freckles like badges of freedom, health, and youth—and the pigmented brown patch that is wrapped around my ankle is like a souvenir from all the sun I’ve ever seen. And because aging skin is inevitable, I think I’d much rather do it with colour than without.
A Bloody Good Deed
I am pathetically squeamish, but as someone who doesn’t want to be labelled a pussy, I decided to beat my phobia by doing something very bloody. And that was donating blood.
With one hand pressed over my mouth (in case of sudden projectile vomiting) and being acutely aware of my lunch moving around my intestines, I browsed (aptly URL-ed) blood.co.uk. I tried to ignore the idea that the buttons I was forced to click on bear a striking similarity to red blood cells. I’m all for subliminal messaging but aren’t red banners, red typefaces and red drop down menus really gilding the lily?
I was somewhat disappointed to see a bar chart telling me that my blood type was currently in plentiful supply. It took away some warped sense of power. I forced myself to find solace in the idea that Oh positive! seems so much more upbeat than any other negatively labelled blood group.
I booked my donation date, and took my iron supplements extra vigilantly throughout my two week wait, despite my mother’s advice not to donate as they will ‘suck you dry’ and that the ‘needles will be filthy’. Clearly she’s done her research.
With D-day fast approaching, words like phlebotomy and haemoglobin and coagulation disrupted my thoughts, and my easily influenced subconscious woke me up in the night with fancifully gruesome dreams me. I sent myself back to sleep by watching numerous videos on YouTube of peppy American teenagers donating blood casually during their lunch break in the school gym. I happily fell into a new dream whereby an announcement was made by the NHS that mine was the best donation that they have ever seen.
On the day, I couldn’t decide what to wear. The Vogue website was unresponsive with my search for ‘blood donor chic’, so I had to improvise with my own fashion instinct. Red was too obvious, and verged on treating the donation like some kind of teenage vampire fetish. I opted for the most charming sundress I have: pastel blue in colour, demure in cut, and with easy access to all my really great veins.
As I checked in, I heard the very motivational ‘I’ve got the power,’ playing from a tinny radio, which didn't lessen the ego trip I was already riding on for doing this selfless good deed. I looked around at my competition. There was a very thespian vibe, with lots of well loved books being read by donors, a body builder (whose arm is later too big to wrap blood pressure pump around – cue donation banter with nurse), and one man with such anaemic hair that I’m surprised he didn’t faint during his finger prick iron count test. A woman in the waiting room looked at me in a very do-gooder way, and her soft smile and serene eyes managed to slightly deplete my competitive thoughts. I realised I was slightly uncomfortable in this situation because I’ve never been one for community spirit, and this blood sharing shebang is about as communal as you can get.
An astute nurse noticed my hand twitching over my phone as I’m hooked up to the machine and reclined into the donation position. She took some very pale photos of me in the theme of My First Time. (Needless to say they were shit, so I subtly took some selfies when she wasn’t looking). The whole process took less than ten minutes. I was disappointed at the lack of squeezing device to stimulate constant blood flow, and was told just to wiggle my fingers for the duration of the process. I would have like nice stress ball in the shape of a pig or a cow, but I suppose in the current climate of a tight NHS budget we can’t expect medical procedures to be aesthetically pleasing. I tried my best to ignore my sack of blood as it was swung back and forth in a cradle to avoid coagulation (vom) — slightly reminiscent of The Woman In Black’s rocking chair. I also felt virtuous for spreading some continental culture: a pint of British blood, with an infusion of Northern France, and top notes of West German heritage. I also hoped that I was saving the life of a rugged motorcyclist who’d been in an accident/would turn out to be my future husband.
After being disconnected from the machine, I was forced to attend what looked like a child’s 4th birthday party: I sat on a tiny chair at a low table with a paper tablecloth, and drank squash and ate biscuits. I also went mad for a basket of stickers saying things like Regular Donor, and My Dad Donated Blood Today. Strangely, everyone else around me looked completely unenthused as if these badges of honour weren’t the reason they were here. Mr Anaemic Hair sat there sipping his orange juice with a dutiful aura, as if there really is no option not to donate when you’re healthy.
Whatever my ulterior motive (getting over a phobia, an article, some extra calories burnt, free biscuits, getting drunk quicker…) I will be back in four months time bringing a group of intrigued and selfless friends with me.
Pink Neurofen!
Cry Baby Cry
I’ve only recently been given the gift of producing tears. For years I wanted to, but I couldn’t muster any extra moisture from my eyeballs, so I went to see a therapist and now I can cry whenever it’s appropriate. It's the happiest thing that’s ever happened to me.
I'm sure some regard it as a weakness, but I think it should be celebrated and encouraged. I am on a mission to unstiffen the upper lip of the British. I believe it can be done since, firstly, the current UK weather is beyond Mediterranean and secondly, I had a very emotional response/cathartic experience whilst watching the results of an honest polygraph test on Jeremy Kyle.
To help you feel less embarrassed about being a pussy, here are three photos of me in varying degrees of sobbing, and the reasons behind the tears.
1. I didn’t get my own way.
2. I was moving away from the city I’d lived in for three years.
3. I was watching the film, Now Is Good. Tearjerker doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’d also recommend Marley and Me and PS I Love You for this activity.
(It's great to be part of the club that can say) I love a good cry. Please feel free to send me photos of your crying faces. I'm sure they would move me.
Honey, Honey...
...how you thrill me (uh huh.)
These lovely pots of honey found their way into my bag during breakfast at a hotel in Florence, Italy. Obviously opening them would ruin the lovely appeal of the diagrammatic label, so they will remain closed and serve as two bookends and one paperweight.
Also, have a fun hay fever combatting tip: eat locally made honey.
So whilst you perfect the art of writing swear words with runny honey on Greek yoghurt (a favourite pastime of mine), have a listen to this obvious/appropriate and lame/great song.
NB: Please excuse my filthy window ledge. I have no excuse.
Living and Learning
Today (as I try to claw my way out of my extensive student overdraft) I noticed that my knicker drawer is looking particularly haggard. Once colourful pants are now washed out and greyed, and perma-mystery stains and broken elastic are festering in the depths of my underwear drawer. (Not to mention a number of never worn red g-strings that I bought whilst blinded with the excitement of a 50 cent bargain bucket at Victoria’s Secret on an a confusing trip to New York.)
For the price of £2.99, I had the genius idea of revamping my entire underwear collection. I decided to dye it all black. It’s a classic underwear colour: flattering and forgiving; classic and sexy.
After ignoring the instructions on the packet of recruiting a six-litre stainless steel bowl, I found a nice plastic box to do the job, and set about stirring the stew of underwear in need of a makeover with a wooden spoon.
An hour later, I learnt an important life lesson: clothes dye doesn’t get on with polyester blends. Obviously this had been another piece of advice that Dylon gave me that I chose to ignore. I think it's one of those things that you have to see to believe…
So —perhaps a spin on ‘crotchless panties— I have invented ‘black crotched panties’ (apparently the only cotton part of my underwear drawer). So, let's call this an innovational success. And let's always remember this.
I’ve always been Team Canine when in comes to the dogs vs. cats debate. But last September, a cat that we called Percy walked into our house and made herself at home. We couldn’t leave her in the house when we all went home for Christmas, and that is why she came back in January all knocked up, and suddenly we became a house of eight girls and five cats.
This one of the kittens, Tallulah. She could have been a cat supermodel given the right kind of platform. She had long skinny legs, the most symmetrical face I’ve ever seen and very tolerant of my relentless photo shoots. She is now called Miss Kitty, and lives in Bristol.
Bedtime reading.
Creative Block
Photo courtesy of Ben Boothman. Article featured in his publication Design Aid.
It is essential to have perfectly prepared materials in order to start work productively.
I lay down a clean stack of A3 cartridge paper. I begin the vicious circle of the ordeal of pencil sharpening/lead breaking. I employ a needle from my sewing box to cope with the number of broken tips that are clogging up the sharpener, and amassing themselves in a shameful pile of uselessness on the top sheet of paper.
A while later, satisfied that all 20 are now sharp and reliable enough to endure being drawn with, I rank the pencils on my desk from hardest to softest, 9H to 9B, with their foil embossed names proudly displayed. Easing a ruler against their blunt ends, I persuade them into a precise, level row. With their newly mismatched lengths, this looks absurd. I reorganise them by height, an equally foolish arrangement, and dejectedly put them back into their pencil pot.
I walk to the nearest stationery shop and buy a mechanical pencil.
The prodigiously creative Ludwig Von Beethoven drank ‘buckets’ of strong, black coffee. My eight-cup cafetière seems inferior in comparison. Some people might feel that the speed at which I push the plunger down is excruciatingly slow, however I believe that the slower the cafetière plunger is pushed down, the better the coffee is. And of course I would never dream of blaspheming my tongue, or any mug for that matter, with instant coffee. Two minutes later, the plunger has reached the bottom, and its ready to be poured.
I add some whiskey take the edge off doing nothing.
Why have I written such a meandering and convoluted start to this article? I was less than enthusiastic to start serious research into the subject matter of creative block. In fact, my final submission landed on the editor’s desk over a month after our mutually agreed deadline. Am I guilty of procrastination or am I a victim of self-sabotage? Is the reason it exists merely due to the fact it has been given a title? I can imagine the defensive fury coming after accusing someone who claims to have ‘creative block’ of being lazy, or unimaginative or speculating that the condition doesn’t even exist.
Of course it is frustrating not being able to tap into your creative skill when it’s a livelihood and a passion, but perhaps creative block is more the embarrassment of the whole situation of not making anything that is further detrimental to creative production.
Every artist suffering from an unwanted pause in their art making will be frustrated, mainly at themselves, which is not something that an artist likes being, especially if one has the artists’ typically large and fragile ego. Maybe overanalyzing, searching for and chasing your creativity could make it even more intangible.
Perhaps another way of handling the situation could be embracing the supposedly unwelcome impasse. An artist might like to dine out on the romantic idea of being officially blocked creatively, for reasons other than lack of skill or commitment. It’s somehow inversely trendy to be inflicted with such misfortune as it is to be a creative that cannot create.
Is it helpful for artists to experiment with illegal stimulants? Or would apathetic-making after effects make the whole venture counter productive? A successful example of drug use for creativity can be found in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s opium fuelled dream that inspired him to write Kubla Kahn. It is left unfinished because after being interrupted whilst writing it, and no matter how much more opium he took in the name of poetry, he never managed to reenter his trip like state to complete the masterpiece. The ever-creative Picasso was also an opium user, and who knows if Pollock’s paintings would have been so thick with emotion had they not been so fuelled with alcohol.
A more conscientious way of self-medicating could be through the use of ‘study drug’, Modafinal. Originally abused by Oxbridge students, the drug allows focus and energy for hours beyond what nature intended. Users feel a little bit manic, but very determined and capable when a task is in mind. Perhaps suiting to an artistic manner, my experimentation with it caused inflation in confidence and ability to achieve. I also found myself falling victim to obsessive tidying when I didn’t have specific task planned, and was decidedly more peppy for the entire 32 hours it takes to wear off. (If anyone’s interested, I’m selling them at £2 each).
It’s more conventional cousin Ritalin is more often prescribed for people with A.D.H.D. (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Having exaggerated my symptoms during a test with a psychiatrist, I was blessed with a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. that allowed me to be prescribed Ritalin. I was expecting the effect to be similar of some kind of magic bean, which would fill me with the desperate need to be productive and create work. Without a goal in mind, I became fidgety and intense, causing distraction and annoyance to whomever I was with. I wanted to be involved in everyone else’s creativity, not come up with my own.
A.D.H.D. also means that I am easily distracted, which could be a reason for Jordan watching me type. Stop it. Stop watching.
Anyway, being distracted could be an advantage. Distractions can become inspirations. Forcing your creativity is possibly exactly what stops it from being possible. Absentmindedlydaydreaming is a way to let ideas organically arrive of their own accord, instead of forced, contrived work. Conversely, there is the well-known mantra (modernized from Aristotle’s centuries old theory), ‘Fake It Till You Make It’ (which is often used as a therapy technique for combating depression).
For productivity, perhaps concentration isn’t what is needed. If there is a huge market for a study drug, surely there is a niche market for a ‘creativity drug’. Hallucinogenics conjure wild ideas or obscure ways of looking at things. A number of cartoons are rumoured to have been inspired whilst their creators were on acid trips.
I spoke to creatives that said ‘Oh, poor you,’ very sarcastically when I asked them what exactly creative block felt like, because I’d never had it. Their eyes definitely sparkled a little with a sense of privilege of having had an artistic problem that they’d battled and overcome. ‘It’s the worst thing. It’s like you’ve rinsed all your ideas.’ How insightful. Remedies suggested were walking, Internet browsing, and second hand bookshops as well as the benefits of collaboration and conversation.
What if creative block was an unproven medical problem? The famous artistic temperament perceived to be had by painters, writers, musicians, and sculptors is often seen in manic episodes of frenzied hypomania, and episodes of depression- big highs and big lows. Munch, Pollock and Van Gogh were artists that all suffered from bipolar.
I agreed to complete this article within a two-day deadline. It took me that, plus another four weeks on top to make any sort of start. I don’t think it was creative block, I think it was some kind of resistance, maybe the rebellious streak that all artists want to possess, even if they’re faking it. So actually, perhaps creative block is the artists’ state of rebellion, because when they are being happy and productive, there is nothing tortured or emotional about the work. Maybe it was my fear of failure that could be to blame for avoiding writing this article. Atychiphobia afflicts a sufferer with such an intense fear of failure they choose not to take the risk in the first place. As delicate as the artists’ ego is, doing something shit could do more harm than good. I often find that procrastination can become the work in itself.
At my desk, I pick up the top piece of paper and tip the broken lead into the wastepaper basket at my feet. I examine the emptied piece of paper at arms length: organically produced faint lead squiggles have made delicate marks in the center of the page. This can qualify as a piece of work.
I take it to the nearest picture framers to make it official.
On Coffee
A black sharpie pen tells me that Steve has 3 shots in his grande cappuccino.
A woman leans so far across the table in the train carriage that her breasts are squashed against the laminate pine, and her chin almost touches Steve’s cup. She attempts a seductive look over the cup to catch Triple Shot Steve’s attention.
‘Have you finished your coffee?’ she asked softly, and purposefully.
‘Yes,’ says Triple Shot Steve.
‘Would it be possible to put the lid on? I just can’t stand the smell’, she says resolutely with only a hint of self-consciousness, aware that the entire carriage is judging her fastidious request.
I’ve never known anyone to dislike the smell of coffee. To me, a coffee is the most comforting and inspiring smell there is, but maybe that’s of the association it has with writing. The smell of ink might be comforting for a printmaker, or the smell of grass for a gardener, or the smell of the pub for an alcoholic. It’s like creative fuel; I can’t imagine anywhere I would be more productive than sitting in a café with nothing else but coffee, a notebook and the people on the other side of the window for company.
I wonder if Steve would have eaten the left over cappuccino foam with his spoon, or run a long index finger around the inside of the cup to collect the bubbles and erotically licked them off (perhaps for this woman herself’s benefit) had she not humiliated him into claiming he’d finished. As it was, the woman had tarnished all hot drinks for the passengers of that carriage, and the almost empty cup was humiliated, and forced through a very resistant flap into a dustbin between two pairs of seats.
My interest in coffee stemmed from my interest in celebrity paparazzi shots. I was always drawn to tiny celebrities dwarfed even further by their venti takeaway cups. As an easily influenced fourteen year old, I deduced that to appear on trend (with the bonus of being made to look skinnier simply by carrying a cup bigger than my face), it was imperative that I started having zero calorie hot drinks to go from coffee shop chains.
Something told me that hot chocolate didn’t hold the same kind of status symbol as coffee, so I weaned myself onto caffeine with a mocha and seven spoons of sugar. Eventually, I learnt to handle my mocha with with no sugar, and months later, I braved a very sweet latte. Chasing the buzz, I started asking for double shots, and graduating to a sugarless coffee was a proud day. Finally, after several years of force-feeding, grimacing, sugar relapses and milk cheating, I achieved my ultimate ambition: I enjoyed a tall, black, Americano.
And then I had the right to become a coffee snob. (I proudly know nothing about the difference between Relentless, Red Bull and Pussy. And don’t get me started on chicory, decaf or Starbucks.)
I love turning my nose up in disgust when I see someone heap a teaspoon of instant coffee granules, and watching in disdain as they stir boiling water into any ill shaped mug. My morning coffee cup is so delicate that the white china is almost translucent. The height to width ratio makes the cup feel open and solid, without the tackiness of a flare or the heaviness of mugs sold by Sports Direct. I also am revolted by anyone drooling over their cup of coffee whilst trying to battle a hangover. Coffee is far too special to be tainted by a hangover.
After all this bravado, I know nothing about what coffee means to be Columbian, Kenyan, or Arabica. My excuse is that I’m always too spaced out for lack of coffee when I choose which vacuum packed brick will be strained through my coffee plunger for the next month (Although secretly I fear that if someone served me a black coffee made with over processed Nescafe granules, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid).
Image from Remy Millar's project, Corporate Crockery Cleptomania.
Catch Me A Match
Perhaps it was because all my friends were in relationships. Maybe the catalyst was my housemate poking her head into my bedroom and remarking that I reminded her of Bridget Jones (although I’m sure most of students smoke in bed with a bottle of wine whilst listening to power ballads at some point or another). It’s possible that it was my limited and unreliable booty call list. Maybe it was the shock of being recently rejected by someone less attractive than me. Perhaps I was lured in by the French accented woman in the advert, who coyly laughs into her cup of tea as her contrived ringlets bounce around her glowing face. Whatever the initiative, I started browsing the internet for love interests, and absentmindedly signed up to a website. Seconds later, I’m told I have a message that I can’t read until I hand over my credit card details. The curiosity to read words from an admirer soon overrode my stubborn pride. I rationalized that a month’s membership at £1 per day wasn’t that extravagant. And with that, I became a fully-fledged, paying member of the dating website, match.com.
My mysterious message was from JamboJimbo, an 18 year old whose description of his body type as ‘a few extra pounds’ put it very, very mildly. He unabashedly declared, ‘You look gorgeous… and if you don’t ask, you don’t get’: a profound first lesson in the etiquette of dating websites. Although his bravery was refreshing, and briefly warmed my heart, I thought I had better become a little more thick-skinned to sweet natured admirers. I got the sense that real life dating rules (such as who is out of whose league, and playing hard to get) apparently don’t apply in the world of cyber dating. I thought it was less offensive to ignore him, than to reply with a formally written rejection.
I perused some more profiles. I found at least a dozen men who seemed to think it was very witty to write, ‘Let’s just say we met in Paris,’ in their advertising line. A lot of men were questionably ‘self employed’, as did they like to use direction words to describe themselves: open minded, laidback, down to earth, and outgoing.
ChristopherT requests his date to ‘never go to Oceana, and don’t be a chav’. Duke101 will only accept a date with a girl as long as her weight is below 9st 2lb. Blackprince9 wants a girl who offers to go halves on the bill, just so he can refuse. Sirksemaj screams I AM AN EASY GOING GENTLE SOUL. He also informs potential dates that he produces music in his bedroom-based studio and went to the school of life). And Jacob_S doesn’t want anyone that rubs their Oyster card on the reader; you must be a tapper.
Through browsing profile photos, I learnt that I’m particularly offended by certain types of portrait: I have an aversion to men posing next to any kind of monument, standing on balconies in front of a sunset, or pouting at themselves in their bathroom mirror. Other more specific offenses include someone dangling off the back of an arcade game motorbike, while implying he is from the west side with his hand gestures, and a potential murderer who has used his prison mug shot to lure ladies in.
My friend gave me advice on what to put as my profile picture. She forbade me from putting up any photos wearing sunglasses, because it insinuates wanting to hide the face due to ugliness. She banned me from putting up a picture of me in bed with a kitten (fair enough) and apparently it’s threatening to use a photo in which I am brandishing of a large cake knife (although I thought I looked like a domestic goddess). It’s also not appropriate to be wearing provocative clothes (my Fuck Me I’m A Fresher t-shirt or my Cocaine and Caviar hat), or to have cropped a man out of a picture with only his dismembered arm remaining around my shoulder.
A drop down menu on my profile asked me to describe my appearance, ranging from ‘perfect’ to ‘below average’. My friends were shocked by my arrogance of putting that I was ‘extremely attractive’. My logic was that the kind of people that have to go onto a website for someone to be romantically interested in them might be less aesthetically pleasing than others; the overall standard of attractiveness is lowered, therefore everyone is moved up a league or two. More raised eyebrows. Abashed, I demoted myself to merely ‘attractive’.
I wondered why williamharisson19_1, the marathon running, Justin Timberlake lookalike was on a dating website? Maybe it’s because he’s boring. That often happens with attractive people; they have never had to develop a personality because people warm to them instinctively because of their good looks. Or maybe he’s very stupid, given that he has revealed his full name and birthday in his username. As I continued to browse, I noticed that a lot of the men on here run marathons. Maybe its because obsessive training and careful eating don’t leave much time for dating. The JT lookalike ‘favourited’ me and I ‘favourited’ him. Match.com sent us a mutual email like an embarrassing parent, announcing, ‘You like each other!’ With any nonchalance now sabotaged, neither of us contacted the other.
By contrast, Oli_W sends me a very blunt message: ‘So we’re on match.com, we obviously have issues :)’. Maybe he’s right -one of my issues is that emoticons make my skin crawl- but I don’t want to think of myself as being in the same category as this 27 year old, beer-bellied ‘banker’ who claims his light red hair is blond. He asks me for my ‘3 worst points haha’ [sic]. After my reply (impatient, irrational and critical – all slightly more charming than my actual worst qualities: unhygienic, shallow, self-entitled) he answers his own question in reply, even though I wasn’t remotely interested. ‘Am I aloud 4?’ [sic]. I tell him that if I had a fourth, it would be correcting spelling and grammar: ‘Yes, you are allowed four.’ Apparently this makes me ‘Cheeeeekkyyy!!!!’[sic]. There is so much sic everywhere that I want to throw up. I cease all contact.
A few days later, I accepted a match.com member as a friend on Facebook (‘Can we sack off this instant messenger? Move onto Facebook and try there?’), as if we were on a sofa and he was suggesting we move things to the comfort of the bedroom. This accidental metaphor from big_sharp1 was a wake up call that internet dating wasn’t for me. Perhaps people turn to online dating because of the isolation that the internet era has created; a kind of catch 22 that obviously works for some people, but not for me. I prefer a physical life, and this bias of mine meant that I didn’t approach cyber dating with any belief that I might actually meet someone romantically important. I reported someone for a not even completed chat up line, was offended that someone hideous had the audacity to view my profile, and was horrified that someone was pathetic enough to do my quiz. Clearly, in this case, I’m not a team player.
I cancelled my subscription after a month; I met my significant other shortly after (through the traditional ideal of mutual friends). Although it is nice to know that if I’m ever craving a virtual wink, I’ll know where to go.
Heart shaped print by Remy Millar from the project, 'The Reluctant Ichthyophagist'.
Innovative way of mass cooking eggs.
Remy Does Robin Hood
It is my belief that everyone has a copper coin collection. It might be by choice, in pot on your mantelpiece, or by inconvenience: those obnoxious 2p coins hiding the much more precious 5 pence pieces in your wallet. Perhaps your coppers have outsmarted you, and they’ve been collecting themselves in a kink under your carpet, or hibernating down the back of your sofa cushions.
My collection is in an old mustard jar that I have optimistically sprayed gold and lovingly inscribed with a sharpie pen: COPPERS. The other day, when I couldn’t fit another penny into it, I realised that I was filthy rich with brown money. I decided to depart with my dormant cash collection, and deposit it into my bank account. I loaded my fortune into an orange sock, so that the jar wouldn’t weigh me down even more than my stagnant wealth was already doing, tied it with a brown ribbon, and went to my local financial institution (bank name withheld for security reasons).
The faceless monitor inside told me that my savings totalled £2.47. I was confused: surely I was worth a little more than that? The screen stared blankly back at me for a few more seconds of confusion, and then I heard the tinkle of rejection.
I crouched down, and peered into a mirrored cat-flap. Assuming this was my rejected change, I started scooping the money into my bag (as aesthetically pleasing as the sock/ribbon mode of transport was, it was not the most convenient). My scooping turned into more panic stricken sweeping motions, as it occurred to me that some of the money wasn’t brown. I was seeing silver. I continued to sweep the money into my rucksack as I tried to process what this meant. It dawned on me that I was legitimately robbing a bank. With both sweat and a queue building behind me, I swept the remaining coins into my bag, and strode towards the automatic doors, my eyes glazed and my face guilty and puce. Expecting a jacketless, tie-wearing bank manager to chase after me, I rehearsed some contrived naivety as my stride turned into a trot, charged with newfound adrenaline and greed.
At home I counted my sins. I had stolen £15.45, and 50 Croatian lipa. I now understood how Robin Hood felt. I enjoyed the idea of punishing a big, fat corporation, but also I felt guilty that whoever had emptied their pockets into that malfunctioning metal hole had unwillingly put their money into my hands. So I decided that in the spirit of everyone’s favourite villain (and after switching banks, just in case I was now WANTED), I donated my pillage to the lovely charity, St Mungo’s who help look after homeless people.
Sock — Primark. Ribbon — Hermès.
Asparaguses don't really excite me taste wise, but if something has an elastic band with decorative label hanging off it, it will immediately find its way into my basket.
You can find similar bunches at Morrisons.