Month: October 2014

Strictly: the good, the bad and the ugly

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SCD

Two of my favourite things to do are reading (of which I probably do too much) and dancing (of which I definitely don’t do enough).   I am particularly reminded of this at this time of year, when Strictly Come Dancing invades our lives.

When this series first started twelve years ago I was the biggest fan, Saturday evenings would find me lying on the floor as close to the television as possible and wailing into the carpet ‘it should be me!  It should be me!’  This is what my winning the lottery dream looks like;  I don’t need flashy cars or yachts, just give me a professional to dance with four hours a day.  Heaven.

I find it easier to resist the lure of the sequin these days.  Living abroad I missed the past three seasons, surviving on email updates from kind friends.  I’ve therefore been saved some of the frustration at what the BBC have done to ruin something I loved so much.  I fear SCD is a victim of its own success.  I can still be captivated by a beautiful frock and some divine moves – the American Smooth! The Quickstep! The Argentine Tango! – but I shan’t be committing the hours required of a dedicated fan any more.  Which is the first on my list of what bugs me about the show now:

  1. Sixteen couples – seriously?  Required Saturday and Sunday viewing for four months?  A third of a year.  For me it started to go wrong when there were so many couples they needed two nights just to do their first dance.  And it starts even early with the ‘meet your partner’ show.  I don’t blame the BBC for milking this phenomenon for all that it can, but this is too much.
  2. Props!  The props drive me crazy.  I wasn’t a fan when they introduced ‘Prop Week’ but they seem to be everywhere now.  Rarely is there a dance that doesn’t rely on some ridiculous distraction.  Very annoying, this isn’t Hollywood, people.
  3. That the money from calls no longer gets donated to Children In Need.  A few years ago Pudsey surreptitiously disappeared off the phone banner info.  I am glad we have the BBC and don’t have an issue with how it gets its funds, but this was so sneakily done it took a friend to point it out to me or I wouldn’t have noticed.  There should have been some acknowledgement of this from the BBC, shame.
  4. The judges:  the strategic voting undermines the show, and they have become caricatures of themselves.  Particularly Bruno, will someone please pin him to his seat?  So annoying and embarrassing these days.  Talking of which:  Bruce Forsyth.  It took far too long for Brucie to go, about five years too long in my opinion.  I don’t blame him for hanging on as long as possible with the exorbitant fee he was paid, but he was enough to make us record rather than watch in real-time, simply to skip his cringeworthy performance.

That does lead me on to the one good change:  Claudia Winkleman.  I just adore her.  Warm, intelligent, funny and gorgeous, she is as sparkly as the costumes and quite possibly enough to make me tune in twice weekly again.  Before Strictly Come Dancing eats itself.

Miss Square Eyes

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evil-edna

Evil Edna, a character from the wonderful Willo The Wisp cartoon series

I’ve just finished a week of TV deprivation.   My friend, Jennifer, suggested we do it (thanks, Jen!).   The idea didn’t make me incandescent with anger as the week of reading deprivation did during Julia Cameron’s ‘Artist’s Way’ course, but I confess I was anxious.   As is the general way of things, as soon as I’m not supposed to do something I want to do it more – what you focus on grows, and all that.

My twitchy fingers did reach for the remote more than I care to admit.  I currently divide my time between London and Devon and two very different lifestyles: when in London I work a minimum 12 hours every day in an office or similar, whereas in Devon I work a few hours a day from home.  So the TV hardly warms up in London, but Devon is another matter.  I put the TV on to ‘just catch the news’ first thing in the morning, and it stays on until ‘Lorraine’ irritates me enough to turn it off.  Then perhaps lunch is in front of ‘Loose Women’ or an Australian soap, neither of which enriches my soul or makes me proud to own up to watching.  Then on again early evening until bedtime, even if I’m not watching it.  The mindlessness of this has to stop.

Did my TV-free week make me more productive?  Well, I tidied out a few cupboards, and I read.  Reading is possibly my favourite thing and I do a lot of it anyway, but I took this as an opportunity to re-visit a few favourites.  So I indulged with David Niven’s ‘The Moon’s A Balloon’, the eternally witty Douglas Adams and am currently devouring one of the brilliant Barefoot Doctor’s books, in which I found this passage:

       “The ability to be alone with yourself, to acknowledge, accept and have the courage to face your feelings and be sufficiently nurtured and fascinated by just your own company is, according to certain Oriental medical beliefs facilitated by having strong heart energy.  It is this energy that supports your sense of self, governs your tone of mind, and therefore colours your entire internal experience of life.”

I must have strong heart energy because I am very happy with my own company (or perhaps it’s because I’m a big reader).  I can’t remember a time when this wasn’t the case, the cliché being that I’ve only felt lonely in an unhappy marriage.  I’m bewildered that it isn’t the same for everyone, but know plenty of people find being by themselves uncomfortable.  Whereas the idea of not having alone time makes me shudder.  If I were to be in a long-term relationship again I suspect it would follow the Tim Burton/Helena Bonham-Carter model and involve houses next door to each other.

I’m with Audrey Hepburn when she said, “I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.”   I need quiet and thinking time by myself to re-charge, which is what makes turning the TV on for no good reason even more ridiculous.  From now on I shall endeavour to actually only put it on when there’s something I want to pay attention to.

Underneath It All

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“All the time wasted, caring about this shit.”   Jacky O’Shaughnessy

Yesterday I watched Jacky O’Shaughnessy’s contribution to the Style Like U “What’s Underneath” project (link below), a series in which people are asked to tell their story as they undress.  All of the interviewees reveal poignant experiences, and this one really made me stop and think.

Jacky is in her sixties and new to modelling, having recently been discovered by American Apparel.  Some of her words deeply resonated with me, particularly as she described asking of herself:

“When are you going to be okay?  You’ve been spending nearly fifty years trying to get thin enough, trying not to have cellulite, or ankles that swell … when are you going to be okay?  And I finally said:  Today, you’re going to be okay today.”

So I asked myself, how authentic can you be if you don’t accept yourself totally?  Can you have one without the other?  As I sit here and think about it – again – I don’t think you can.  I do believe that you can be authentic and feel insecure, but only if you accept those insecurities as part of yourself.  You don’t have to be super-confident, but you do have to have the courage to be accept all of you, including the messy parts.  This must be a truth I’m struggling with because I keep having to remind myself, stumbling across this thought again as if it’s new.

Acceptance doesn’t mean you can’t change, and it doesn’t mean you have to love all of you.  Sometimes love can be too big a place to start, liking is a good start.  Authenticity isn’t a static thing, it’s fluid and what being true to yourself is in this moment may be different in an hour, a day, a month.  Whatever it may be, you know it when you feel it inside, it feels like peace.

Am I there yet?  Only in brief flashes.  It does easier with practice and consciousness, which is what this year of trying to live more authentically has brought me, an awareness.  It’s somewhat sad to me that I find it easier to accept the messy parts of my personality than to make peace with the way I look.  There’s something a little screwy in the power we give that mirror.  I value my personality more than I value the way I look, so why is it so much harder to embrace those physical flaws?  And why have I wasted all this time, caring about this shit?

As Jacky said, “Learning to love myself was very hard; it took intention and practice.”  Thank you for the inspiration.  I know I’m on the right path, I’m practicing.  And I hope that some day soon I will be telling myself “Today, you are going to be okay today.”  That is what is underneath for me.

 

Link to the Style Like U interview  http://stylelikeu.com/themes-2/body-image/jacky-o-shaughnessy/

Birds Flyin’ High, You Know How I Feel

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 poss header

“There are no boundaries among the geese … How can you have boundaries if you fly?”

‘The Once and Future King’ – T H White

I find this transitional time of year a struggle. I’m a sunshine girl, I love the hope in the air of spring and the heat in my bones of summer. I can just about cope with winter once we’re fully in it, with the help of a good coat, beautiful boots and warmed wine. But autumn is my least favourite season. I don’t like to see the leaves die, to feel the sudden chill in the air and see the sky colour seep from blue to grey. The days seem to be shortening at an extraordinarily fast speed this year, perhaps that’s just because I haven’t experienced an autumn for a while. Those occasional mornings when everything comes together and the air is crisp and the orange leaves are highlighted against a bright blue sky can help, but I find this time of year just a little depressing.

Except for the geese. There is something about the geese flying south that always gladdens my heart. As soon as I hear the navigational honk honk honk from above, I always stop to look for that swooping V formation, riding the airwaves to better climes. I like to give them a moment of respect for the extraordinary journey they are undertaking, and acknowledge the timelessness of nature.   I’m not quite sure why it’s a sight that fills me with such a sense of poignancy. Possibly it has its roots in reading T. H. White’s ‘The Once And Future King’ as a child, when Wart transformed into various creatures to learn about life. The more obvious assumption is of course simply that I’m yearning for the sense of freedom and adventure they symbolise. Whatever it is, as these geese fly away they lift up my heart.

 

I’d love to credit this picture, but I don’t know who created it (found in the public domain)

Title taken from the lyrics of ‘Feelin’ Good’ by Anthony Newley & Leslie Bricusse