Big City Life...

The thing is Reader, living in London is awesome. Seriously. If you haven't tried it yet, you are a loonie bin and should come for a visit. Sometimes I look at my life and go 'wow. I'm living in a Richard Curtis film.'

I'm sitting on my bed in North London, drinking a glass of vodka and diet coke with lots of candles burning, my housemate is about to show up with some friends and more booze, I have frozen yoghurt in the freezer and the music my downstairs neighbour is playing is so good that I just had a dancing/jumping on my bed session. Tomorrow, I'm taking driving lessons so I can do more film work. This week I'm going ice skating. For the past couple of nights I've watched a tv show I was in for the BBC. There is no part of this that is not AWE-INSPIRING.

2014 is doing well. A short film I wrote for SKY is in production, another is in Pre-Production with one woman MACHINE Caley Powell and every week I get another exciting bit of news about stuff going on later in the year. I'm going to be a bridesmaid for the first time since my boobs grew in and my gorgeous friend The Bride has great taste so I won't be stuck in a fuchsia silk monstrosity for the whole thing.

Frankly, living in London makes me very happy. On Monday evening I'm going for cocktails in SoHo with my producer Gary Morecambe and talented writer Vicki Baron of Empty Photo Theatre (read their blog here: http://emptyphototheatre.wordpress.com/ ) to discuss our next tv project together and at the end of next week I'm off for a week filming on SKY Sci-Fi film 'Kepler' with Scanach Media. I'm also going to take a day to go and sit in South Bank with my notepad and work on the book I'm writing, it's an incredibly beautiful area  and incredible for inspiration.

There's something about being in London that makes you feel like every day is rife with possibility, you could do anything and be anyone. You can be completely anonymous or you can surround yourself with loved ones. And right now? It's where I need to be.

So here's to London, with it's grimy streets and tame foxes. Here's to crotchety black cab drivers and hipster cyclists. Here's to 24 hour Asda, buskers and street lights gleaming through a heady mist of rain. Here's to street food and Soho and secret places that you accidentally discover when you've walked past it every day for a year. Here's to drunk teens on the underground, strange flavoured ice cream in Camden and the view from London bridge. Here's to London. And all it signifies.

Londoney love Reader!
Ash
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The good girl dichotomy....

Reader, I am apparently a 'good girl'. Which does not mean that I want to prance around naked in a Robin Thicke video. I think. The thing is, I've sort of discovered that society has split girls up into being 'good girls' and 'bad girls'. But I can't work out if us ladies sort of do it to ourselves or not too.

So, I don't put myself into the 'good girl' genre on purpose. I like baking and reading and wearing fifties dresses. I'm also a firm believer that sugar does more than salt and try to be nice to everyone. I believe in true love and get very mushy over romance (I think I read too many fairy tales and love stories when I was younger). But I would never have called myself a 'good girl'. Because why would I put myself in a weird camp like that? It's just a bit odd. Besides, I smoke, I drink, I swear, I flirt like nothing else. Surely a so called 'good girl' wouldn't do those things? Aren't I just 'a girl'? Or, what with being in my mid twenties 'a woman'?


So what's made me think of this today? Well, recently I've been referred to as 'a good girl' a few times. Always by men interestingly. A guy (out of the blue, when we were talking about something else entirely) went 'aw, Ash, you're such a good girl. You're going to make someone a great wife one day'. Another guy (with whom I was discussing my eternal singleness) said 'The thing is, you're a good girl. You need a nice guy'. Another (who I was telling about a drunken night out of late) said 'You're too much of a good girl to drink that much!' Now, they were all saying nice things and all meant well, but do I really want to be a 'good girl'? I'm not sure. Because as far as I can tell, good girls don't get to have that much fun. We take care of our friends (including friends that aren't always very good at taking care of us), we pay all our bills on time, we bake for our sick family members and always cleanse, tone and moisturise. But the 'bad girls', the girls who are 'allowed' to drink, have one night stands and spend the rent money on a drinking trip to Mexico. Which sounds quite fun to me. But the thing is, I still have too much Catholic school girl in me to be a true 'bad girl'. If I drink too much I get a hellish hang over the next day. I don't really do the one night stand thing because...well, I don't know really, I just tend not to end up having one night stands (as one guy friend told me, I'm 'wife material, not shag then toss material'. I wasn't sure whether to be insulted or flattered. I think a bit of both. And a bit outraged that those were the two categories he put women into). If I spent the rent money I'd have a huge guilt trip and spend the next 3 months eating noodles and drinking tap water to make up for it.

But is it just women that get this? I don't think it is. We also put guys into these weird stereotypes. 'Ooh, he's a bit of a Bad Boy' or 'he's just your typical Nice Boy', which have their own downfalls. I caught myself doing it earlier, dismissing a crush because he was (in my mind at least) someone who fit into 'The Bad Boy' category. I was talking to a friend about this and she downplayed it, by saying that for girls, this is a bit more along the lines of self preservation-a 'Bad Boy' will be more likely to be a bit of a player, use and abuse or (as my male friend said) 'shag and toss'. But then don't guys go through the same thing with 'Bad Girls'? Granted, men are more likely to cheat than women (see here if you disagree http://www.businessinsider.com/why-men-cheat-more-than-women-2013-9 ), so that could be part of it, but it's weird how we sexualise the 'bad boy' and 'bad girl' ideals. Or rather, women sexualise 'Bad Boys' ('Urgh, I just want a bad boy in leather who's in a band and smokes like James Dean') whereas men seem to sexualise the 'good girl' (just think of the schoolgirl thing, and all the weird fetishes for knee socks). Pretty strange. Because if women are hormonally driven, shouldn't we be drawn to nice guys who would make good life partners and fathers? And if men are sexually driven, shouldn't they be drawn to women in revealing clothing, who openly talk about how much they love sex? Saying that, there was an interesting study of late about the pill and implant and how they can actually change the sort of man a woman will go for (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/birth-control-attraction_n_2981391.html) so maybe a lot of our attraction is less about 'good' and 'bad' and more about our womb making the decision for us? But then what does that mean for men?

Maybe we should stop calling people 'good and bad' unless they actually get sainted or commit crimes. A lot of childcare books say that you shouldn't characterise one child as 'good' and one child as 'bad' as it causes them to try and live up to that type. Maybe we're doing just the same thing as grown ups, but to each other.

Boggles the mind really.
Tarrah Reader!
Ash
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Early days....

Oh dear Reader. So, on Friday SJ and I went to Taste of Christmas in London (quickly becoming an annual tradition) and got very tipsy and very full on free samples of flavoured vodka and cheese and christmassy goodness. I think I was slightly affected by a morning of such crimble delight, because Saturday (entirely unplanned I might add, since I wasn't supposed to be doing it till this Friday) I got a tree and decorated the entire flat! My wonky, home made decorations are now adorning walls, trees and ceilings (yes, ceilings) and Bing Crosby's Festive album is jingling and tinkling in the background.

It's November.

I KNOW. But my thinking is that I've had a pretty tough year and I deserve some joy. Some people would turn to drugs or drinking, I turn to tinsel and mince pies! (Ohhhh, mince pies! I'm going to get one RIGHT NOW).

Yum. Ok, where was I before the sugar rush hit? Oh yeah, Christmas. So, to me, Christmas has a healing effect. This year has been one of the most dramatic I've ever had, changes coming left right and center. The gutting break up of my almost 5 year relationship left me reeling, suddenly the marriage, kids and home I'd been looking forward to disappeared from the future, leaving uncertainty in their wake. Moving out has meant that I can no longer afford to save or buy clothes (even from primark!) and I hit my mid twenties with a bang. But Christmas makes all of that dealable. Watching festive films reinforces my ideals of romance and the chance at true love, makes me grateful for my wonderful family and friends who have been so supportive during the upheaval, talking to my (almost 3 year old) godson about Santa and teaching him christmas songs strengthens my knowledge that I'll be a bloody brilliant mum (whether I have to do it on my own or not) and having moved into my little hobbit den with my fantastic housemate has helped me realise that I can be self reliant, even on very little money. Decorating said hobbit den with said very little money has made me proud that I can make somewhere a true home and still embrace the traditions that I hold so dear. Seeing acts of Christmas charity around England warms my heart and the idea that magic can happen is something I hold dear. And of course mince pies and roast potatoes make everything seem better.

The thing is, I have a great life. Sometimes it's easy to forget that, but the brilliant thing about this time of year is that the world gets warmer even as the air chills. Which sounds like poetic nonsense but to be honest, it's true. It's the perfect way to end a year and makes me feel like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It's A Wonderful Life every time.

So to those who say 'I hate how early Christmas keeps coming every year' and talk about commercialism, all of that might be true, but for some of us, it's perfect, just the way it is.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
Ash
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