My Illustrative Life

You remember how I was lamenting how expensive trousers that don’t really fit me are? I got some for free!

Not blogger-free. My mum’s colleague’s daughter’s hand-me-sideways free.

They’re kind of loose at the waistband, and they ride rather lower at the rear than I’d like when I sit, squat or bend, and they’re tight enough on the thighs that when I put them on (and then periodically, through the day) I have to do the kind of lunges that used to give energetic schoolmasters a bad name.

But they’re mine, and they cost me nothing, and they represent the thoughtfulness and unwillingness to waste of strangers. And they fit inside my boots easily, and I can make them work for me. And they’re a nice colour, a sort of almost-silver. There’s a black pair too, actually, which I should have worn today because I have already got bicycle-chain oil down my right calf. I didn’t notice it happening..

I wore them for my Last! Day! of School! and they stood up to it fine. We are now a team.

The lighting was off, clearly, when I took these. So I fiddled (to no effect) with all the powers of iPhoto, on the one shot where I managed to get my whole foot in frame. A more exaggerated pose too, obviously - I prefer looking a little silly to looking like I’m trying not to look anything but ‘nice’.

Lunges:

And in a moment of colour-normality.. Why couldn’t the balanced photos have happened next to the apple tree? Apple trees are pleasant!

The newly purple stitching about the neck of my sweater matches my boots so well.. I don’t expect anyone noticed, but I did, and it made me feel dandy!

Nuns vs bikers with good hair and neckerchiefs, in a battle of words, in the sixties, with an audience of boarding school girls. On a road trip.

That’s my kind of movie, baby! Dig it!

It was cooler today! And I got a lift instead of cycling, which I already feel bad about actually. But besides my moral agitation, this was good because it meant I got to wear my own clothes! And not sweat all over them! Hurray!

For explanation of why it’s worth mentioning when I wear my own clothes, see here.

So tell me, which of these pictures looks better? The first one, which is just a picture straight off a digital camera, or the second, which is the same picture straight off a digital camera only also having been done over by the “enhance” button in iPhoto?I don’t have sophisticated graphics stuff on my computer. iPhoto, Pixen, and Gimp (which drives me crazy but which I am grateful for, thank you tech people).

This combination of shirt and trousers (and boots) is an easy killer, for me. They will always, always look good to me, on me. The fabric for both is kind of weird; the shirt’s sort of rayon-y feeling with great drape and the trousers are.. a sort of.. nubby stretchy weave? They’re appropriate for ANYTHING, and the colours are my favourite sort of vivid-dirty. Forest colours. They evoke Copper Beeches, which are one of my favourite kinds of tree - the colour change in the leaves from spring to summer is amazing! They start this delicate two-tone peach-green (which sounds awful, but isn’t) and they thunder along into the richest coffee-red. They grow enormous, too, and commonly.

I started tucking my trousers into my boots as my first expression of ‘no, you can’t tell me how to dress, you don’t even know me yet and all my friends who would try are gone’ when I got to college after sixth form, for my Foundation Art year. It felt fantastic then, and it feels fantastic now even though I don’t feel self-consciously brave about it any more. Wearing my boots out this way feels like being toothpaste squeezed to spurt out of the tube. You might recoil, but I’m a healthy product!

As for what I wore yesterday, when it was hot and when I did cycle to work - pyjama trousers. And a different shirt of my sister’s. Hnk.

I guess I need to get my tough charity shoppin’ knuckles on, because until term ends I’m doing lunches every day. I can’t spend three straight weeks in pyjamas and ill-fitting stolen items!

Actually I can spend that long in pyjamas. And I would, if they didn’t ride up so (BHS - not the greatest tailors). But the stolen tops, that’s another matter. I think she might get fierce.

These ain’t my clothes, y’all!

I’m Dinner Ladying the rest of this week and all week and I’m in TROUBLE, because this morning when I got dressed to go to work I had to wear my sister’s clothes.

I’ve gone over in some detail the personal troubles I have with summer clothes, but now I have met the professional perils and they buffeted me onto my rear. See how:

My job entails squeezing around tiny tables and chairs making sure kids eating their lunches are behaving, seeing if they need their food cut or their yoghurts opened, pouring drink, etc. Then I have to make sure they’re safe and happy running and climbing around outside. Skirts and shorts are a bad idea; I don’t trust 4/5 year olds to be fully cognizant of physical boundaries, f’rex. Low-cut or loose tops are a bad idea because I do a lot of leaning over, ditto hipster trousers (no child needs to see the crack of authority). Button-up tops are a bad idea because they gape. The few graphic t-shirts that I own are either intricate - interesting and distracting (they ask me my name often enough - “what’s that about?” is a question I’d like to avoid answering seven thousand times), or scary (when I was small I wouldn’t have wanted to stare at the Crimson Ghost whilst eating, that’s all). Sweaters or roll-necks are WAY too hot right now- really anything long-sleeved is. Showing my belly is inappropriate. And so on. And so on. And so on!

O___O’

This, in my wardrobe, leaves nothing!

!!!

It also does not help that both my pairs of trousers are in the wash right now. Oh, bravo, bravo, I know.

Sister was in the shower so I grabbed and contorted my way into a shirt I haven’t seen her wear for ages and the first pair of skinnies on her floor.

I safety-pinned the back of the shirt of the seat of the trousers because when they say they are low rise they really

are not bluffing, and thank goodness I had a badge of comparable size when I noticed this at the last minute -

..What the heck am I going to wear tomorrow?

When I get paid, I might be looking in to some skinny “jeans” in an interesting colour - I really like the way they just fitted right into my boots. Any recommendations on where to get good quality examples?

It feels like I’m complaining a lot recently. Sorry about that! I will try to do better.

If you ever worried that I have given my heart to a bozo or person otherwise unworthy of it, please - collect yourself! If you cannot take my word for it (fie!), then look upon this; though it does not become a lover to demand proof of affection by material trinkets, compatibility can perhaps be calculated by the measure of unsolicited gifts. Behold!

Awww yeahhhh.

I celebrated the close of my first year of blogging last week, but the first real post post that I wrote was actually published on the twenty eighth. So I have four days to go, til then. Since my gent’ll be here for the next few days I may well be disinclined towards posting anything then, so consider this the partypost, kay?

My first real post was about The Tribe; a show I loved when it was first shown and I was eleven-ish, and which I had just started re-watching a year ago. I still love it, and the feeling only GROWS.

So that’s what was up a year ago. What is up today is that I got an email from Hervia that they are having an up to 70% off SS10 sale. And I am filled with COVETOUS WANT.

I really don’t have any spare money, though, so to dull the pain and on a sudden stroke of it-all-comes-together I decided to assign as many pieces as I could to a Tribe character. The aesthetic philosophies are similar, I think. Awwww, here goes!

All pictures wither from TribeHeaven or Dwayne Cameron’s (Bray) personal site (uh, hope that’s cool?)

Some of these may be tenuous, and some you may think are stinkers. You just don’t understand my vision. Click to buy!

Kay, first, this one was easy: Ebony.

This is a girl who knows how to wear red leather, and also when: always.

For the lulz: Lex!

Pretty flippin’ obvious, if you know the show even a little (if you don’t, well, you should learn): Zoot

I’m pretty sure that Tai-San wore tangerine at least once.. This picture at least has the turquoise, and the spiky.

Trudy had a tiny short fringe through the entire run of the show, I think. The very low vamp and toe cap (? I had to google for shoe terms), with the little prissy hole, echo that to me, and the colour halfway between brown and gold suits Trudy’s insecurity and power trips.

The lilac colour is on The Guardian’s scheme, and the wax-style seal is representative of his grasping for that orthodox, cultish, heavy-formality type of power and organisation!

I always did think that the Technos did at least have snappy dressing going for them, if nothing else.

Nothing, I mean nothing, will ever be as ungodly fug as Bray’s knitted string vest, as seen here. I hate it so much that I almost (not quite) love it. It shocks me offensively every time I see it.

But even when he wasn’t wearing that thing (Amber must have really, REALLY loved him) he was wearing some pretty goony, earnest prep-skate-hippy stuff.

I was going to give him this:

But that harkens clearer to another Dwayne Cameron (goony) role -

And then I saw this, with the right slate-something/white-ish beige colour scheme, and decided that even if it wasn’t totally gross, at least it was weird, like a lace-up vest knitted with string that has apron-straps over the shoulders UGH UGH AUGH WHY.

Amber, my very, very favourite (and how I despised her on the first go round, unable to tell ‘incredible badass’ from ‘goody two-shoes’) has worn a lot of things, and I would put any of them in my own wardrobe in a second. But this was what had the most visual similarity in the collection - matched to Eagle-Amber the resistance leader. Man, just typing that makes me want to wave flags.

The Amber-Bray love ring (or should I say the Amber-Sasha-Amber-Bray-Amber-Pride-Amber-Bray-Amber love ring? Whaddeva, I’m a romantic. The Amber-Bray love ring.

Well romantic as I may be, I have always though that that ring was pretty unattractive. It reminded me of one I’d got off a magazine, and I appreciate that it was given to a thirteen year old by her father, so it’s not going to be Tiffany’s, but.. ehhh. It’s so HUGE.

This ring is huge too though! And has Amber’s signature turquoise, and a knobble, and silver, and a symbol on the ‘face’.

It also has the white of Bray’s heinous vest. Of course.

Bonus! What did Zoot and the Locos wear to do their exercises? WONDER NO MORE!!

You’re welcome.

June theme: Festivals! Featuring: anecdotes of my teenaged adventures; leather; Noel Fielding. Click the picture to enjoy!

Sometimes there are things which inspire and one admires and aspires towards somehow, without the specific desire to be/be in/be with the places, characters, wardrobes, movie. Sometimes a film will take you by surprise, and speak to you with atmosphere and colour scheme and attitude in a way that heightens your intent to do your thing your way, without actually being a film that you want to poach costume from.

Let’s learn about one such film, my fine comrades!

Let’s learn about RED SURF. A George Clooney movie with an 18 certificate, from 1990. Which according to imdb comments went straight to video!

The cover LIES, you guys! Yeah, even bargain bin dvd releases bother to photoshop their covers in an attempt to cash in on more lucrative, starry periods of their lead actors’ careers.

This is what George Clooney actually looks like in this movie:

Lulz!

The back cover was what convinced us to buy it, actually -

- the back cover’s picture of how George Clooney actually appears in the actual film. Why do they think people buy cheap-ass dvds? Either because they can’t afford expensive ones, or because they like sub-par cinema. Or both. Don’t lie to us. Don’t patronise people who know they aren’t at Blockbuster, don’t put off people who don’t want to be. That said, check out this alternate cover/poster, as well as this one (Check’em all here). What, can no-one in the world appreciate 90s grunge metal surf criminal drug choker George?

Apparently not, I guess.

So. In Red Surf. George Clooney plays Remar, man without a family, man without law, man without qualms about lying to his 90s-earnest girlfriend. He loves to play pranks like convincing his best friend his girl is cheating on him, then tricking him into thinking that they have accidentally murdered her. Fun times! Then they follow that up by going out on jet-skis (loaned from Gene Simmons, “the Doctor”) to collect drugs from the sea.

This is the apparently communal party drugs casual crime beachhouse, also home to sensitive hat-wearing girlfriend Rebecca:

(This is Rebecca, later in the movie:)

This is George Clooney/Remar feeding best buddy Atilla (actually? the movie’s real eventual hero) some delicious cocaine from his lap whilst driving. They love to weird out the squares!

Did I mention this was a movie about George Clooney, looking in no way how I imagine “George Clooney” to look? Acting the part of a leather-wearing curly hair having ex-professional surf bum large-scale drug dealer? Who is also able to get a sensible, on-the-wavelength multi-necklace wearing art-loving girl pregnant (again; implied abortion alert) and convince her that he will change and raise a family with her, through thoughtful gifts of guitars and well-timed fake promises?

Well, it is. WEIRD MOVIE.

Aaaanyway. Remar finds out Rebecca’s pregnant, and she tells him she wants to keep it. He’s all, “okay..” but when she tells him she wants to go to Portland to raise it with a friend of hers who has kids already, he starts getting protective and territorial. Promises her he’ll change, blah blah no more drugs and crime, more time for romance and kisses. She gets up for ice cream, and by the time it takes her to serve two bowls full he’s all *coffcoff*I really love drugs*coffcoffff*. Sadface.

Later, Atilla and Remar have a heart to heart about how Remar’s going to screw things up and lose lady & baby - Atilla is psyched at the thought of having a baby around - and Remar talks about how for the first year, you hope the baby won’t die, and it doesn’t, and then the second year it starts to hate you. And it hates you and hates you.. with this honest frightened bitterness. And he tells his buddy how he feels like he’s suddenly lacking control. There’s a later scene where Doc tells Remar to quit with the drug deals, and later than that Remar refuses, outright refuses with yelling and a pushfight, to take money from a deal that all his buddies planned without him with the explicit intention to set the couple & child up for a secure life. Why is it that movies with these real relationship scenes and true-person complexity get bargain binned? I have no idea what makes a “good movie”.

The whole thing keeps building - running big drug deals get you in to trouble, did you know? Well, Red Surf is here to tell you that they do. They have to fake a murder, and Remar misses doctors appointments with Rebecca, and Atilla becomes her rock (it’s really nice) and they talk about girl babies playing little league, and they have to send off one of their gangbrothers to save his life after he talks to the police. He cries! He’s the most annoying sort of character, that you just want to squash and yell SHUT UP!! at, but when he leaves his guys he cries and it’s sweet and sad. Bargain bin film. I don’t know. Then there’s more peril, and more apologising/lying to Rebecca, and the blabbermouth gets stabbed and then probably fed to wolves. The antagonist/drug partner lives in this decrepit ruined house with two guys in slacks and vests with big guns and slicked back hair, and he has a pit of wolves in his front room. Did I not mention that?

Soooo eventually Remar dies. He gets machine gunned and blown up on a jet-ski. Atilla and Rebecca set him on fire and push him out to sea for burial. But not before he tells Atilla he loves him, when Atilla is trying to convince him to let the boys do the run so he can stay safe for baby! BARGAIN BIN MOVIES. He literally says “I love you”.

Atilla doesn’t take too kindly to his friend being all killed and such so he goes off to infiltrate/murder the antagonist/partner’s (..okay, just antagonist by this point) gang. With Doc Gene Simmons, who was in ‘Nam. I really, really want a video game out of that scene. Or all of this movie. He kills them all and avoids the wolves (not everybody else does, om nom nom) and hurray, he wins!

There’s actually a very nice, assumably realistic ‘person unused to machine-gunning has to use a machine gun’ scene. Atilla wears his heat on his sleeve!

By the closing credits, Atilla and Rebecca look to be starting this super-sweet, semi-awkward, adorable take-care-of-each-other romance. He follows her to the train station as she’s leaving, bereaved, for Portland and.. it’s sooo cuuuute. I was completely satisfied by the progression of this film. My beloved and I both had that “no wai, for reals!” expression of surprised enjoyment - for £2.99, in a village shop, we’re used to expecting Jaguar Wong or “Richard Harrison IS.. a ninja“. Not an honestly watchable, variably heartfelt, fun movie. With George Clooney in a bandanna with a crack pipe.

This is my favorite George Clooney movie. Of all time.

No Rebecca, really!

All the clothes in this movie are so worn-in. they look like they’ve been walked over by the whole cast, and have sand ground in and the colours worn out. Nobody’s constrained by what they wear - comfort first, expression of wild-life values second. Honestly I’m not sure if I like it so much only for itself, or for the fact that it has such an un-George Clooneyish George Clooney. I mean, that’s a compelling element, right?

But I think a fair part of it is that it’s that 1990s grunge-metal-taste-of-hippy aesthetic that’s so present in a lot of films & shows I really love but completely divorced from the music that made the scene. This is what I know about music in the very late 80s - early 90s: Patton-era Faith No More and Primus existed (excellently). Also, people liked the bands they namecheck in Bill & Ted and Wayne’s World. THAT’S IT. I guess Nirvana happened some time around there..? I’ve made no secret of my hatred for music journalism and I find the sartorial guidelines hard to use as an entry point to the sounds because as far as I can tell there was an extreme gender divide - dudes wore baggy t-shirts and loose trousers, girls wore leather bras, spandex and hotpants. Neither of these looks have really worked for me, as yet, and for some in-brain reason that really impedes my investigation and understanding of the knots of bands and sub-genres that make up the cultural era. And that failure to break through the bubble surrounding my perception of the music scene means that I feel inauthentic approaching the dresscode with increased zeal. It’s a vicious cycle! Of ignorance!

A movie like Red Surf though, which I assume has no budget to source big soundtracks and which only broaches the question of “what do you listen to” with mostly-covered t-shirts and easy to miss flyers pasted on bedroom walls in scenes where character tension is high, doesn’t make me feel like a double outsider. I can assimilate the costume apart from the intimidating musical context.

Here’s a question that Red Surf raises for me - what’s so wrong with me that I’m suddenly not finding 90sgirl hats completely, ultimately ugly?

Wanna know a secret? I wrote this entire post saying “Lisa” instead of “Rebecca”. Yeah, she doesn’t get that much autonomy. I still have this film a ten out of ten on IMDB.

BONUS: Here’s the pretty shitty trailer! With really awful sound quality!

Some days I just don’t feel like taking a photo, you know?

I hope you can read my writing. If it’s too small, click to zoom!

Just submitted another blog post for Waterscape - it probably won’t get approved until Monday. I don’t think the editors work over the weekend! You cannot fault that, of course. Oh no wait, not until Tuesday! It’s a bank holiday, of course. Anyway - look out for it next week! It’s another illustration; the second in my “good and useful times I have spent by canals” series. Because you know - I have spent a lot of times by canals (I typo’d that as CABALS, quite different!) or other waterways.

But, the picture above! A good way of showing Wot I Wore, or no? A decent way to catch up when the weather’s bad for photography maybe? There’s no colour, obviously.. The skirt’s kelly green and black (it’s featured here before a whole BUNCH of times), the jumper had a whole post to it last year - that was before it shrank, of course! Funny how much change of fit means change of meaning. It’s mostly grey, anyway. The hat’s grey with faintest hints of lime, the boots are purple, the tights black. Belt: brown.

How do you feel about the bracelet? Personally, I feel that it is SMASHING. My mum gave it to me earlier, fair out of nowhere, and it is just the right weight. And it looks like leaves!

Leaf-bracelet and green suede and grey wool, I feel I should start waling over hills and through forests and beside rivers. But instead? I shall be watching the Eurovision song contest.

It’s a day full of things, isn’t it?

I’ll do them in this order.

First of all, my Hankshirt arrived this morning!

And it is a very pretty colour, actually. Like egg yolk, or those white and orange daffodils.

Do you know who Hank Green is? Well if you don’t, I will tell you: he is half of the Vlogbrothers, who are two brothers who started keeping up with each other in video blog form a few years ago, and kind of caught on. Basically they are nice people who do nice things, and their fans (”nerdfighters”) are nice people who help them do nice things. Oh, just go and watch them, there’s more to it than that.

Anyway, the Hankshirt was created for his 30th birthday earlier this month and proceeds went half to giving him presents an half to plating Rainforest. The Hankplants are plants planted in honour of Hank (see video below). Honestly it does feel a little weird having a shirt and some plants all about some real live guy I don’t even know, but it’s an odd mixture of “nothing personal”, and something personal.

But I didn’t wear it. Because you see, today is also a protest day for Take Back Parliament. Which called for purple to be worn. And you know, why refuse when asked?

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

The twenty-fifth of May has quite the full schedule!

It’s time to Wear the Lilac, too. Which is an idea that I cannot consider at length without my eyes getting a little something in them. If you read Night Watch, the Discworld title I mean, this will mean something to you. Probably something that will squeeze your heart a bit (and something nicely relevant to a day also about political reform), but what it’s come to mean in.. the ballworld(ours)?.. is something else. Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer’s, and Wear the Lilac aims to raise money and visibility for research. DONATE if you can.

I know I’m not alone in considering the Watch books my favourites of the Discworld library. I have my problems with world and with the writing (I find that the women adhere too closely to a sensible/silly binary, f’rex) but even so - I love these books. They have seen me through long/boring/sad/sleepless hours. I so enjoy the ‘jaded mentor finds earnest and true vigorousness due to new charges and remembrance of the importance of The Job’ trope, and Vimes fulfills it perfectly and adds in a bit of that-could-be-my-brain-be-careful-but-be-proud. I owe Mr Pratchett’s mind. I’d appreciate you helping me try to pay it back a little. I haven’t donated yet because I literally can’t, but when I can? I will. Remind me, if you like.

And then on top of that it’s towel day. I’m not what I’d call a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, to be honest - I can appreciate it, but it didn’t stir me like it does a lot of you (oh, and, the 2005 movie SUCKED) - but Dirk Gently’s adventures are my kind of fiction. So I’ve got my towel with me, too, and I’m not panicking even though that’s a lot of referencing to fit into one day, one outfit, one post.

Whew. One politics, one environmental and two britlit (hahaha I just thought of that portmanteau and it is SO OBNOXIOUS that I am going to use it) and slacktivisms. NERDFIGHTERS! DFTBA!

I’ve been quiet this week (have you missed me dreadfully?). Not because I haven’t been writing or drawing or doing, but because I have been doing these things TOO MUCH I guess.

I’m still working on that post about posture, and the Clueless one, and the one about ‘discovering’ Patti Smith. And I’ve been drawing from life and from photographs and from imagination. I’m just about to start editing the short film my sister and I shot last week.

But I’ve also been JUST SO BUSY (for me). Job applications and CV reworking (constant) obviously, and Monday at British Waterways, but my CRB check came through so I’m doing two days a week as a Classroom assistant now too.

IT IS THE MOST TIRING THING IN THE WORLD

Primary School teachers have a job that asks unreasonable amounts of them. That is all I will say.

Mostly what I do is listen to kids read (4-9 years old) and help them do it better when they have trouble. It’s awesome. They call me Mizz Napier. When they’re already fluent I get them to read out loud and coach their vocal delivery. If I were getting paid, this would be very nearly the greatest job I could imagine.

Since I am not getting paid, I will say that I like it enough to bust out the bicycle in order to get to the darn place. Buses have done me wrong on four separate occasions, getting to and from the school, and my patience snapped. I needed to take control of my own destiny. It was time.. to ride!

I can’t actually remember the last time I rode a bike. I mean, I can remember that I had a bike.. probably into high school, I just remember that as a fact, not as an actual using-my-bike memory.

I practiced last night for ten minutes or so after dad and I pumped the types and adjusted the seat of my mum’s old wheels, and I’ve never used a skinny-wheel bike before. You know, the big thin wheels on “grown-up bikes”? The bike that I can’t remember my last uses of had big chunky thick wheels that only came up maybe two thirds of the way. That old bike, which was purple and excellent, also had a comfortable seat. Which is another difference between the two bikes I am talking about.

So anyway, I rode 4.3 miles to get to school today. It took me an hour and I had to stop three times so I didn’t pass out or throw up, because apparently not you can’t forget ‘how to ride a bike’ but you can forget how to sensibly ride a bike. Also, it was hot. When I arrived, I had to go and lie on the floor in the staff room. Everyone was very nice about it.

But the point is: I did it! I became one with the freshest of blogging hipster chix. Bike ridin’ gal. That’s me! No pictures.. yet.

At school, I dug the garden. Took out old sprouted brussels, took out stickyweed and dandelions and thistles and some leeks (which I ate for lunch), trimmed the grass, turned the soil. Then I spent the afternoon teaching nine year olds how to plant a plant (broad beans and sweet peas) in a garden.

I told you it was a great job.

The 4.3 miles home (I repeat because I am PROUD) took me half an hour and I had to stop ZERO times! Well, no, actually, one time. But that is because I forgot to hide my laces and they became caught in my gear chain. That doesn’t count!! Shut up!

I thought I should share a couple of things I learnt in case anyone else is foolish or pigheaded enough to go from no bike riding for many years, to much bike riding in one day:

• Take water.
• Can you see? Or if you are blind, can others see? You/they can? Then wear suncream.
• If your momentum can take you faster than comfortable, even peddling can, LET IT. Or you will die. A lot.
• Stop to rest before you are sure you need to stop to rest.

You’re welcome!

And that’s why I have been so quiet this week.

Just got back from a flight and a bit of a stint as a Maypole. Chin chin!

Today has been bafflingly tiring. Took a bunch of pictures - or should I say, had a photoshoot? - at CorinaCorina (or Corina Corina) for my next BSB column. Taster!

After which, I spent an hour or two in the rain. But I did meet these fine gentlemen!

P.S. This guy appeared on the c4 Alternative Election Broadcast. I dubbed him “Jim Cary Elwes”. You see it, right? Right.

I don’t credit bloggers and street style photo culture with my current level of inner confidence and self-pleasure. I do credit them, large-partly, with my confidence about where I stand in the public, every-day world. Bloggers, online alt-fashion communities and street style photo culture are why I could not keep up my teenage idea of the whole world is against me and nobody wants me to look how I want.

Seeing people dressed outside of the highstreet (and even outside of the known sub-culture) norm(s), happily, at various ages, all over the world, being themselves, made it impossible for me not to know that no matter where I am, there is someone who understands a bit, who doesn’t resent my self-expression and personal visual comfort, who is pleased by my constructed image and who, if we met directly, would give the metaphorical fist-bump of solidarity.

This is all I wish to provide here.

My main memory of highschool peer wardrobe approval was when my friend said to me “Why did you buy that?” about a skirt.. that I was wearing. Whilst we were out. Gee that made me feel comfortable!

I’m sure that I was as much of an ass as anyone.

I feel it like a duty, frankly (pompously?), to honestly present my thoughts and some e-semblance of my philosophy/personality so that people who are similar to me and who haven’t yet found any or many allies don’t have to feel alone in the world.

I’m not asking anyone to make a connection, or cruising for buddies - I just want to be visible as a subject of comparison. Just in case.

It’s not that I don’t do it for the plain satisfaction of self-expression, “activism”, to show off, for mental exercise, to keep me busy, etc etc as well. I like writing this blog! But I probably wouldn’t, because I am lazy, if I didn’t have the blog-related life experience that I do.

I am not sure if this counts as a manifesto, because I find the concept of “a manifesto” hard to grasp. Do you have to use particular language conventions? But it’s a “why I do this”, which I think is basically the same? Right?

Oh and I am not asking for gratitude, obviously!

When I was younger the idea of people participating in BDSM or violence-related sexual roleplay kind of upset me. Not in an “arrest them!” sort of way, I just didn’t understand why people would want to be what i understood as ‘mean to each other’ in their intimate relations.

BUT THEN, I read the first issue in the “Kissing Mister Quimper” volume of Grant Morisson’s Invisibles - pencilled by Chris Weston, Inked by John Stokes, coloured by Daniel Vozzo. This issue has this scene in it (the last page is separated from the first by a section of a different scene):

The back of this volume hold this quote from Spin: “A timeless battle between the forces of psychic liberation and their dark counterparts, sleazy insectoid gents of control and repression… Basically, it’s about everything.” Robin and Mob, seen below, are the leaders of a cel of psychic magical armed freedom fighters combatting the combined forces of aliens from another dimension (which might be more understandably one-sentence described as chaos gods?) and human malevolence and cant-be-bothered. Does that help, if you haven’t read any of it?

And then I was like, ohhhhh right! No I can see that, sure Because for these characters, that makes sense.

So thanks for helping me become a more enlightened person, Grant and Chris!

A nice thing about blog-reading is that you come across people who are really doing stuff. People who, no matter how long and hard they may have worked behind the entries, have an air about their writing that suggests that one day they just decided “I think I’ll make a shoe” or “I think I’ll move to a new country and handcraft leatherwear” or “I think I shall sail around the world, by myself”, and then they did. When my dad says to me “You could carve that piece of stone I have outside” on a day when I have nothing planned, having read those people Doing Stuff helps to mean that I think “well yes, of course I could”. And then, I do.

No better pictures than the above yet, I’m afraid, but I don’t reckon I did so bad for a first try. Relief more than sculpture, but I’ll build up. I did both sides, and I only hit myself a couple of times. It was good learning!