Viva La Essex Girl!!

Question: Why does an Essex Girl wear knickers?
Answer: To keep her ankles warm.

Question: How do you know when an Essex Girl's been using a computer?
Answer: There's Tipp-Ex all over the screen

And in those two 'jokes' you pretty much get all you need to know about the girls from the fair county of Essex...at least according to TV producers, Nuts magazine and most of the rest of the population. Oh, the jokes I've heard over the years implying that because I was born in Essex I must either be a slag, really thick or both. It got worse after Jodie Marsh was 'discovered' in "Essex Wives" and even more horrendous after that stupid "The Only Way Is Essex" drivel was shown recently. I will confess to raising a wry smile at some of the jokes, but right now I'm making a stand. And not just because I've heard them all by now...

Why is it so bloody difficult to make a programme about Essex that doesn't show its residents as thick slags or those smug 'wide-boy' arses who make me want to scratch their precious Ford Cortina with my white stilettos? I'll be the first person to admit that we have more than our fair share of those two groups, but there are some phenomenally talented people from Essex who should make the county proud - you never see them on any of these shows! It makes me so angry - if you were to make a programme that deliberately conformed to the stereotypes of Muslims, for example, or the Welsh, you'd be shot, and yet it's ok to do it about Essex-ers? Enough is enough!!

We aren't just the county that gave the world Jodie friggin' Marsh and that muppet Scott from Five (for which, by the way, I heartily apologise. We had no right to inflict them on the rest of the UK...I also apologise for Noel Edmonds and, inadvertently, Mr Blobby). Dame Maggie Smith is an Essex Girl, as is Dame Helen Mirren; Sally Gunnell's a Essex Girl born and bred; hell, the leader of the Peasant's Revolt - a certain Mr Wat Tyler - was an Essex Boy, as is Bilbo Baggins (Sir Ian Holm) and the man who discovered antiseptic, Joesph Lister. Even old Fang-Boy himself, True Blood's Stephen Moyer, is one of us. And although he wasn't actually born here, the late, great Douglas Adams - the man who discovered the very meaning of life, for goodness sake (42) - moved here at the age of 5, as did Griff Rhys Jones. Goddammit, even Joan Sims was an Essex Girl!! We have brains in this county; brains and wit and hard graft and we're NOT all thick and useless!! We work hard, we play hard and we fight bloody hard for what we believe in, as Uncle Wat and Aunt Boadicea have inspired us to do. Essex folk, especially its women, are bloody fierce and I am fiercely proud to be from this county.

So the next time some smart arse makes some wisecrack about being an Essex Girl, I'm going to look back at the roll call of 'real' Essex Girls (i.e. not Jodie friggin' Marsh) and lift my chin with pride. We're NOT thick. We're NOT slags. We're fierce and beautiful and the only reason the rest of the world makes up jokes about us is because they're jealous and scared. And if it happens to you, my fellow Essex Girls, this is what you do. Channel Boadicea. Channel Dames Helen and Maggie. Conjure up the rebellious spirit of Wat Tyler and then skip away from the poor pathetic fool who has to joke about who and what we are, safe in the knowledge that, actually, we are utterly amazing.

And if you happen to be wearing white stilettos at the time - ironically or otherwise - so much the better...

Embrace your inner Essex Girl, people, and don't take others' opinions to heart. It's what Dame Maggie would do, and SHE, after all, is fabulous...

I Strop, Therefore I Am...

Bonjour blogverse!! Remember me? I appear to have been decidedly lax in writing my usual incoherent rambles recently - this is what I get for going on holiday and then going away for a long weekend; I get out of the habit of writing and then I can never find anything to say. It's vastly annoying.

Which brings me to...today's rant. I mean post. Whatever. Things that annoy, irritate and wind me up beyond belief. Please excuse the no doubt emo-ness of this entry, I'm ever hopeful that I'll stop being a mardy cow in the very near future and be back to my normal blog-shattering best. Or worst, depending on your point of view. It's very stressy at work at the moment with all this prostitution research (yes, I'm still doing it. The research, that is. Not...never mind). Just when I think I've cracked it, I find another sodding report to to read. Ho hum...

So, things that annoy me very muchly at present...

1) Some of the reports I'm having to read. When I was at university studying research methods and ethics and shiz, I was taught that although every researcher clearly has their own bias, opinions etc, a good researcher doesn't let them influence the actual work. Clearly some people never got the memo, and it's making it very difficult for me to actually read said reports because while they may have perfectly valid and useful info in them, I want to fling them across the room shrieking like a demented banshee.
2) Also on this theme...some of the men interviewed about their use of prostitutes are tools and make me despair for the future of the species. I've known a few arses before but some of these morons take the cake. And the guy who said that using prostitutes is like going to Tescos? You need therapy. Or sectioning. Either way, you must never be allowed near a supermarket...it's for the good of everyone involved.
3) People. Specifically people who antagonise, wind up, piss off and upset my friends or in any other way make their lives different from the warm love-hugs-and-sunshine vibes I would wish for them. You've seen the Incredible Hulk, right? You know what happens when he gets angry? Ok, now look at my profile picture and imagine me green and muscly. You will not know what hit you when I'm finished with you...
4) Footballers who are completely unable to sing their national anthem. Ok, so 'God Save The Queen' might not be the most stirring of anthems (that would be Italy) but it's ours and anyone lucky enough to represent their country at the highest level should at least have the decency to mouth the words at the very least. If I was a top-class footballer (unlikely, I know, but stick with me) I would be so thrilled to get the chance to represent my country that I would sing the whole of God Save The Queen from start to finish and be bloody proud and honoured to do so. The rest of you overpaid prima-donna's can sod off.
5) Car and perfume adverts. Just tell me if I can drive the car from A to B and if the perfume is vaguely nice rather than all this stupid posturing and flouncing about. I mean really - the new Opium ad is just pointless.
6) My body. It is officially crap and I want a new one. Preferably one that doesn't break down every five minutes. Is that too much to ask for?

However...all is not doom-and-gloom in the world of the Kady-cat at the moment. I have discovered that I am a song! Several songs, actually, and I'm not talking about the ones that use my real name. (Although Ben Fold Five's 'Kate' is just...well, there are no words). But for those of you who first knew me from my slightly manic posts on the Nightwish forum, you will know that in some corners of the web I go by the name Nocturna (I shall not reveal my others - self-preservation and all that). Thanks to a combination of boredom, frustration and curiosity, as I picked the name seemingly at random only because I am a bit of a 'creature of the night', I went googling for songs about my nom de plume, and I have to say I like what I found. There are a lot of songs that are 'Nocturna Something' or 'Something Nocturna', so I guess that's cheating a little bit, but it still counts as far as I'm concerned. So, songs about moi...

Therion - Via Nocturna. It's all about following Nocturna and Luna to midnight revels - so I am the moon and the key to the kingdom. Obviously.



Old Man's Child - Hominis Nocturna. This is a grower...never heard of them but hey, new is good.



Moonspell - Nocturna. Ah, Moonspell...I've been converted to you.



Anabantha - Nocturna. Ok, I have never heard of this Mexican band until now and I sprechen pas de Spanish, but this song is fab. And it has a FF8 video - what's not to love?!?!



So there you go. Nocturna is, in fact, awesome...

The Pope Show

I swore I wasn't going to do this post. I promised myself that I wasn't going to do it, because I know there are many people out there who are passionate about their beliefs and, although I may not agree with you about it, I have always said I would defend to the death your right to worship however you see fit (as long as you don't push it down anyone else's throat. Especially mine). I even, shock horror, found myself defending the Catholic Church last Sunday in an argument with my Anglican grandmother, when I quite reasonably pointed out that not every priest is a paedophile and it isn't part of their job description. Yes, of course what has happened in the Catholic Church (and no doubt many other organisations over the years - look at orphanages and boarding schools) is horrendous; words can't accurately describe just how vile and reprehensible it is, and frankly the attitude of the Pope and the rest of the powers-that-be to the whole thing has been despicable, but bad apples and barrels, y'know? Believe me, no one was more surprised than I was by my sudden impassioned defence...

However. Oh, but however...No longer can I keep my big trap shut, and so this is going to be a bit of a ranty, what-the-fuck kind of post. Now that His Popeness is actually here, I'm starting to get slightly sickened by the whole freaking charade.

First of all, I find it completely ludicrous that in a nominally-Anglican country, the tax-payer is expected to contribute towards the cost of the whole shebang. We're facing horrendous cuts thanks to the retarded attitude of our Government; if we were a Catholic country I could maybe understand it, but we aren't. And why the hell is the whole thing being treated as a state visit? The Pope is the head of a religious sect to all intents and purposes, not a visiting President or monarch; why we have to treat him any differently is beyond me. The Catholic Church wanted him here, fair enough - he is their spiritual leader, after all - but then they should foot the bill. It's not a state visit in my eyes, so I want my money back, please. Give it to a charity that works in AIDS research, or put it towards a fund to help pay for counselling for the children abused by priests...

There is also the small issue of the whole attitude of the Catholic Church - and recently reiterated by His Popeness - with regard to women (although I couldn't give a hoot about women bishops, my inner Feminazi screams in unbridled fury at the implication that my gender makes me a lesser being in the eyes of some constructed faith - that's patriarchy for you); homosexuality, and the general attitude towards contraception. Now correct me if I'm wrong (I lay no claim to being an expert on the Bible; I've never read it) but I'm not aware that it actually states in black and white 'thou shalt never wear condoms'. Besides that, even if it did (and I know there's the whole 'go forth and multiply' directive), things have changed in the past 2000 years or so; Jesus and his happy band of followers didn't have to worry about HIV and AIDS whereas we, sadly, do, and how anyone with any modicum of influence and control over people (like the Pope) can stand by and actively encourage people not to use condoms when the rates of HIV and AIDS are going through the roof (especially to the faithful in Africa)...well, as far as I'm concerned he's as good as killed those people. And, of course, his attitude to abortion makes me sick. So when I have some terrified woman in front of me, crying her eyes out because she got pregnant after being raped in an alleyway, or a woman whose health and life will be put at risk if she has this baby which the Church is encouraging her to have anyway because of the whole 'multiply' edict, all I can do is tell her she can't have an abortion or she'll go to hell? Yeah, that's compassionate. Love thy neighbour and all that. Nice one.

But the whole tragic spectacle has become more and more ludicrous with each day that passes, especially now he's actually here. Even before he got here one of the aides compared Britain to a Third World country; when, offended, the Brits reacted, the Vatican's idea of damage control (apart from the sudden and inexplicably well timed attack of gout suffered by said Cardinal) was, "no, no, no, we didn't mean it like THAT! We were referring to how multicultural you are!" Ah good - so you're all racist as well then? Glad we got that one cleared up...

Then, of course, there was The Speech yesterday, followed by The Speech today. Basically, the Pope has come to Britain to try and return it to the Holy Church; to turn back the tide of secularism and atheism that has swept the country and which has caused the marginalisation of religion.

Ok, first of all...most people in this country don't give a shit. We are nominally an Anglican country, not Catholic, and haven't been since Henry the Eighth thought Anne Boleyn looked a bit of a goer; therefore we don't really give a flying monkey about coming back to Holy Mother Church. It was a bad break up, I'll admit but please, move on. We're so over it. I'd say most people in this country would either describe themselves as Agnostic or Atheist anyway, unless you're one of our multicultural brothers and sisters, in which case we know what the Pope thinks of you...he's already slated other religions because, let's face it, you aren't the 'true' religion like his is. Allegedly. So yeah, this is my first problem with his crusade.

The other thing is...well, I guess he needs to sack his advisers. If I were Pope (fat chance as I'm a woman. Oh yeah, and a Pagan-heathen-burning-in-hell-non-believer), and I were coming to the UK on a mission to try and repair the damage of recent scandals and atrocities and to bring people back to the Light of the Lord, I would want to show the world how wonderful my religion is. I would actively want to get out there and spread the word, to bring people who have left in disgust back to the church and to maybe spark the interest of others who previously had no faith, so that they could seek out the information for themselves and maybe - just maybe - find spiritual peace in my faith. What I would not do is come over here and denounce the whole bloody lot of you as 'dangerous atheists', compare secularism and atheism to Nazism, and tell a load of schoolchildren that science was a bad thing. Way to win friends and influence people. It actually makes me even more antagonistic towards religion, especially Catholicism, to have this man come over here and start bitching about how unfair it is that he and his church don't have the power and influence they once did. I don't care for organised religion and I never have, although I find all religions deeply interesting. What I don't appreciate is being told that I'm going to burn for all eternity because I chose to use my brain instead of blindly following some invisible entity. My faith is in Nature, so it's sort-of Pagan/Wiccan but not strictly; this doesn't make me a bad person. Forced conversion, however, does; something organised religions seem to be only too familiar with (and they all have very short memories, it seems. She says, having the obligatory pop at Islam and Judaism as well - I don't discriminate in my antipathy and anger. Although you never get militant Buddhists, it seems...)

Yes, Christianity may be getting marginalised in the UK today, but that's because we live in the modern era instead of clinging to archaic and outdated rules. For those who choose to believe, whether that's in God, Allah or the Pink Unicorn of the Seventh Sanctum, there is a place for them in Britain, and we should never lose sight of the fact that this country has (mostly) always been a safe place for people to practice their religion (it got a little hazy in the middle for a while, what with Catholics being burnt and then Protestants/Anglicans being burnt, and the Jews being persecuted, and the Puritans so on). But we can still be nice people, nice human beings, without believing in Catholicism or any other religion. Similarly, as the recent problems within the church have shown, you can be a man of God and still be an utterly reprehensible human being - and the Pope's way of dealing with this is to make some half-arsed apology to people and then tell us that instead of bringing these bastards to justice, we should pray for them. Only after I castrate them with blunt nail scissors and see them put before a court of law, because strangely enough - secular though it may seem, Your Popeness - that's how we do things in the real world.

I'm sick of the whole sorry charade now and I can't wait until he goes back to Rome. Although this whole blog could just be because I'm bitter about the fact that I haven't lined the church's coffers by not owning any of the official merchandise; maybe if I had a 'Benedictaphone' to sing into, I wouldn't be so recalcitrant and secular. Or I could just be a realist...

Head. Desk.

This is going to probably be a very, very, very short and possibly quite ranty and disjointed post because I am close to blowing a gasket. I shall not dwell on the details because to do so would only make me turn violent; suffice to say that certain people need to realise that a group that was set up for fun is not a dictatorship and I will not be held responsible for expressing an opinion. I'm awaiting both the backlash and my expulsion from said group. Up the Proles!!

On a related-but-happier note, I am trying to get my arse in gear to come up with something vaguely workable for the annual trial that is NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month to the less acronym-happy among you). Every year I say 'never again' and yet, come November or July, I am poised over my laptop in a feverish haze attempting to knock out 50,000+ words of something sort-of coherant. It's like an addiction or something. So as November prepares to roll around, I find myself once again at a complete loss for what to write. As it's NaNo, I can't finish the never-ending epic that I started last JulNoWriMo (July Novel Writing Month) because it has to be a completely new piece of work; but although I have a few vague ideas floating around, I can't make a decision or formulate a plot. The options so far?

1) Something based on the life of one of my heroines, Elizabeth Siddal, which is what I planned to do for one of my 2 (yes, 2!) novels last November; I started it but it didn't go to plan as I had no real idea what I was doing, trying to combine her life story with that of a modern girl who was obsessed with Lizzie. So not autobiographical at all, then. ;)
2) Something about the 'Winchester Geese' and the Crossbones Cemetary - I'm spending my days at work at the moment researching prostitution and the 'single women' *coughprostitutescough* buried in Crossbones intrigued me even before I started this.
3) I have a vague notion of Death's Goddaughter being my heroine. She works in a morgue and has a smart-arse cat called Mr Eddie, a live-in ghost called Henry and...and I have no idea what to do with her/them.
4) Something based on a weird dream I had this morning involving the world being devastated by plague, 'safe' communities and the wandering rabid plague victims, and me marrying some Irish guy clled Johnny. Nope, I dunno what it means either.
5) Just writing "help" 50,000 times over.

So yeah, no pressure to come up with anything. Maybe something will crop up the night before, like it did when I wrote the epic that became Poppy Valentine. I must revisit that...

Anyways, to lighten my mood, a video. This was taken (not by me, although I was picture-happy on the night!) at the Sarah Jezebel Deva gig at the Underworld in August. She's awesome, her band are awesome (I got friend-requested by Ablaz, the bassist, which was weird but uber-cool; he rocks!) and the whole night was awesome. I love this song...

I Enjoy Being A Girl...

...except on days like these, when my hormones appear to be all over the place. Dearest hormones, please kindly bugger off and stop making me think and feel the most ridiculous things at the most inopportune moments...

Exhibit A - making me cry like a mad woman at a kids film - a friggin' kids film!! - in front of said kiddies. Yeah, cos that wasn't embarrassing...

Exhibit B - making me weep and wail over the programme about gorillas. All fine and dandy when locked in the privacy of your own room; much less genius when in the presence of others at their house.

Exhibit C - the 'inappropriate' thoughts about 'inappropriate' people. Now I know why I suddenly like cricket - you can stop that right now, y'hear me?

Exhibit D - making me sob with fury over Jenson getting booted out of the Grand Prx today, and making me further sob when poxy Hamilton won.

Exhibit E - reducing me to a blubbering wreck over the kindness of certain friends, who were completely taken aback when their kind words produced a torrent of water to rival the Danube in full flood.

And that's just in the past 24 hours, and does not include the general weepiness throughout 'Stand By Me' or the end of 'Carousel'. Yes, hormones, I really think you can sod off...

The 'Typical Brit' Post...

...typical because I am going to discuss The Weather. Specifically, I'm going to talk/moan about the biblical downpour that I just had to endure. Unless when they knocked me out at the hospital last week to do my tests they screwed something up and I've actually woken up next February, it is August, isn't it? Y'know, summer? When people wear flippie-floppies (thanks, Rich) and shorts and go a bit mental cos of all the sunshine and the heat and stuff? So why the hell did I have to go to Writers Group wearing my winter coat and hood? More to the bloody point, why the hell have I had to walk home through the beginnings of a flood that would make Noah a bit twitchy and start reaching for some wood?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with rain as such. Ok, it can make my hair go frizzy sometimes, but it's not the be-all and end-all, and there's actually something rather wonderful about a brief summer shower; but when it comes to the weather equivalent of someone literally throwing buckets of water at you, it stops being entertaining and just becomes a pain in the arse!

Tonight, for instance, I had on my lovely purple-tartan bondage coat with the pointy hood (which Melissa said made me look like a pixie, so it's no longer my KKK coat!) so that my hair and everything else would be kept dry. This was fine going to the meeting because the rain wasn't too bad, but Jeezy Creezy, by the time I got home I looked like I'd just gone swimming off the end of the pier in my coat and all my clothes. Absolutely everything was drenched; coat, cardigan, two tops, leggings, skirt, boots...everything. I had to have a hot shower just to stop myself shivering. All the cars were aquaplaning down the A127, which didn't help; three times some annoying person in a car got me soaked, although as I was drenched anyway and they couldn't really help it given the circumstances, I don't suppose it made much difference. All this and it's going to continue to chuck it own overnight and during the morning commute...at this rate, I think I'll go to work in my cozzie and just swim there.

That's not a bad idea, actually. Now where did I put those flippers...?