Tweaking the truth where necessary

I don't really like the term 'lying'. It's such a negative word and it's immediately considered sinful, but I don't know why because each and everyone of us lie on a regular basis. 

To me, to lie, is to deliberately withhold the truth for personal gain or to hurt others. I prefer the term 'to tweak the truth where necessary'. Long winded I know, but there really is a fatal difference between a lie and a white lie. 

Now whether you think you lie or not, you do it all the time, even if it is completely innocent. Where girls are concerned, we generally lie about our weight, how much something cost; we say it was in the sale, but 9 times out of 10 we just really needed that handbag. My favourite lie from girls though is,  'I'm on my way' or  'I'm ready' when actually, you're still in bed, and it's going to take you at least half an hour to get where you're meant to be. All of this is completely innocent, white lies if you will, but it's lying all the same isn't it?

I've lied on numerous occasions throughout my life, but never with the intention to hurt someone. Just little things like, 'This casserole's great Mum' when it's actually rather revolting, or when I'd tell her I was at a mate's house but we'd definitely be walking the streets in the dark thinking we're invincible. I lie almost everyday when my Mum's shouting at me from downstairs whether I'm out of bed yet and I instinctly say yes from the warmth of my bed, and when she asks me how much money I've spent on something, I generally tell her half as much as what is actually true. In my defence, I remind all the parents of Father Christmas, the tooth fairy... they were disappointingly all lies, you crushed my dreams.

Other than this however, I pride myself on honesty. If I didn't like my friend's haircut or what she was wearing I'd tell her, if I don't like someone, I won't be two faced, giving the impression I do like them. I don't understand why honesty is such a difficult concept. It makes life so much easier and honesty is one of the things I value most in a person. In fact, it unsettles me the ease with which some people lie. They simply roll off their tongue until they almost convince themselves. It starts as tweaking the truth now, but they have shown the potential to lie ...

Today I managed to accidently snap a key in a lock at work. Thanks to my patience and skill at picking locks, I managed to carefully extract the other half of the key with a paper clip and a pair of scissors. Stood with the evidence in my hand, I realised I had two choices: I could lie, hide the evidence, tell my boss the key is simply lost or I could own up. I decided to own up. It would have been easier to avoid the hassle of getting told off, but quite simply I had nothing to hide, it was an accident and  I'm not a very good liar anyway, too much of a nervous disposition and an influential conscience. This was minor, nothing life changing or that could hurt somebody, but then you get those lies that are designed for this sole purpose, such as cheating in a relationship or committing a crime. 

Now I'm against lying, but I am not so against tweaking the truth where necessary. It's up to the individual to differentiate between lying and tweaking the truth. Any form of lying will eventually catch up with you, the difference in consequences will be however, your justification.

On ya' bike..

So one of my New Years resolutions this year was to lose a significant amount of weight, and I proposed to do this by joining a gym. However, it is now March, and unsurprisingly I've still never stepped foot in a gym, and I've put on weight as opposed to losing it.

I got it into my head that I'd really enjoy spinning. However, I'm too much of a wimp and have chickened out of every single session; the thought of being surrounded by a bunch of toothpicks and getting all out of breath and sweaty in front of people just terrified me. So as opposed to around £300 just to go spinning once a week for a year, I spontaneously invested in a bike of my own this weekend.

I say spontaneously, but I've been thinking about it for a while and the beautiful weather on Monday twisted my arm, although I can't help thinking I may have jinxed the weather, as since I ordered it, it's started snowing again. Many will argue that I needn't have spent any money, just found some motivation from somewhere to go running, but this is unrealistic. One, because I run something like Phoebe from Friends:

and two, because I'm just not sport orientated. Some people are naturally motivated and quite enjoy exercise; I on the other hand, am not one of these people. Therefore I decided investing some money might motivate me to avoid my purchase being in vain. 

Now this move has given my friends and family great amusement. Where is the faith eh people? Okay, so I don't have the greatest track record; the last time I rode a bike was when I knocked myself out coming down an awfully large hill (I was a bit of a speed freak and kind of liked the Evel Knievel look). However, I've successfully given up crisps for a whole month now; I feel I may be turning a corner, and applying this willpower to the rest of my life... maybe...

This purchase has many pros such as that it could potentially save petrol but this is not why I brought it. I don't think I'm experienced enough to cycle 20 miles to uni three times a week and I'm late for work 90% of the time now, therefore I doubt this would put me in any better stead with my bosses. Also, it occurred to me recently, I don't actually have any hobbies. People ask me what I do in my spare time, I either don't have any to spare or I'm just milling around unproductively so I'm hoping that this is going to become my first official hobby and force me to do something productive.



I took it for a little test run to the end of my road this evening and I was shaky, not going to lie, but I felt liberated. I felt like I was five all over again and the new rubber smelt like Christmas. The wind was rushing through my hair, my head was held high with an uncontrollable grin at the freedom ... okay I'm creating quite a warped, romantic image, it was more like chattering teeth, wobbling all over the road and the face of panic when I realised I couldn't stop properly. I'm definitely going to be needing a helmet to say the least.

However, I'm going to persist, mainly to lose weight, partly to have a productive hobby, but to prove all the doubters wrong if anything.

You won't all be laughing when I'm rocking the lycra look and I'm giving Victoria Pendleton a run for her money.

A friend of mine.

So with today being Mother's Day, it would be appropriate for me to talk to you about my Mum, but as you know, I hate to be predictable and quite frankly, that'd be boring, so I'm going to tell you about one of my friends instead.

This woman is my oldest friend, nineteen and a half years to be precise. We share similar tastes in music, films, books etc. even share a name. She's one of those friends who came and never left, and who I know never will. She knows me better than anyone else, sees through my guilty face or my fake smiles, and picks up on my negative vibes, because we're too similar not too.

 

Okay, maybe this friend just so happens to be my Mum as well, but I don't want to talk about the day to day motherly tasks she undergoes. She’s been a full time Mum for almost twenty years and it’s about time she became known as herself again. She knows she's amazing and that's all in the commercialised cards we buy once a year. Cooking, doing my washing and ironing, clearing up behind me, I could do all these things myself but I'm simply lucky to have a Mum who still does all this for me, and I am grateful every single day, not just once a year. No, I want to thank her for all the stuff that sets her apart from all the other Mums and why I love her more than anything.

It’s the way she makes me laugh.

The way she protects me.

The way she listens.

The way she's honest with me.

The way she'll support me in anything I do.

The way she reassures me when I'm scared.

It's all these little things that I simply couldn't survive without.

 

I've learnt a lot from her. She's my role model, my inspiration, and I'm proud to say I am who I am because of her. She's stronger, more beautiful and cleverer than she gives herself credit for and she's the best judge of character I know. I'd be lying if I said she didn't say 'I told you so' but that's the motherly instinct slipping in.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not perfect. Sometimes we argue, like when I wrongly take things out on the people I love, but she always forgives me. She understands, let’s me vent off and then tells me I'm being stupid. She loves me unconditionally and I hope I've made you proud. 

 

At nineteen, I could be independent, living on my own, supporting myself but I wouldn't want to. I just don’t know where I’d be without her stealing my shoes and clothes like an annoying little sister.. Besides, I like to think she needs me as well. I know I'm always going to need her as both a Mum and a friend.

She gave me the one thing no one else can, life, and that creates a bond that can never be broken.

So, Happy Mother’s Day Mum. Thank you for all the motherly things you do, but thank you for being my friend, my best friend.

The Great British weather.

So, I don't think I'd be a true Brit if I didn't moan about the Great British weather. Well actually, not so great, particularly with the forecast of yet more snow this week. I honestly could not be any more depressed at this prospect. 

Have we not had enough? It's now March, and we're still being forecast cold spells as low as -8 degrees in some parts of the country. I shouldn't be defrosting my car a matter of weeks before Easter. It's absolute madness. 

When I was little, I used to love snow. We never used to have much of it and I'd dream of white Christmases, but now, we've had so much of it, it's become a nightmare. It disrupts our entire lives: schools close, work places close, the whole country comes to a stand still; not to mention that it is merely hours before it's shimmering beauty is a distant memory, and it's a dangerous, black sludge. 

Generally, I actually quite like winter. I love the idea of snuggling up in front of the fire, I don't mind the hat hair from woolly hats too much and I could quite easily live in oversized, cable knit jumpers all year round. However, this year, it's really depressing me. I don't know whether it's because we had about a weeks worth of summer weather last year, or whether it's the sheer amount of snow we've had this year, but something's different. 

There is scientific evidence to support Seasonal Affective Disorder, most commonly known as 'sad' syndrome, but I never thought much of it until now. Every morning I wake up and it's either white or wet outside, and I just don't want to leave my house. It's miserable and it's reflective of my mood, 'pathetic fallacy' if you will.  

However, Monday saw some sun. It wasn't a heat wave, but warm enough to sit outside of Costa, warm enough not to have a winter coat, warm enough to willingly leave the house; it was a Spring day. This truly lifted my mood. Okay, maybe the chinos, sunglasses and espadrilles were slightly premature, but it was just what I needed, a bit of light in my life. 

Now the British weather has never been great. It rains all the time, if we have sun, it lasts a matter of days and generally we're living under that one massive cloud in the sky, but we as Brits, stoically trundle on umbrellas and coats always on hand. I remember holidays in Cornwall or days at the beach in the rain. Holidays were spent playing board games in a caravan with the rain pelting its roof. However, it seems to be getting worse; the seasons just seem to merge into one cold, wet blur. 

So, brace yourself for the cold a bit longer, I for one will not be coming out of my house if it's white again, I will be hibernating until at least June. I will be holding out for when I can write a post, when I'm celebrating with this song. 

How do you like your eggs in the morning?

Breakfast. It's said to be the most important meal of the day and I couldn't agree more. Not because I like to set myself up for the day, oh no, that'd be too sensible, but because I would gladly eat breakfast, as all three of my daily meals. 

Everyone likes different things for breakfast, some opt for something light: fruit, or maybe some yoghurt. Many go for something filling like cereal, or porridge throughout the winter. If they're feeling cultured, may a croissant or some other form of pastry. Toast is a classic, with the wide variety of possible toppings and of course, we can't forget the legendary Great British fry up. 

For me however, I like eggs any which way. Dippy boiled eggs with soldiers are my favourite but in whatever form, they're always a winner for me, that is of course, closely followed by a good ol' bacon sarnie. 

Now, I value sleep so I don't always get up in time for breakfast. In that half an hour it'd take me to make breakfast, I could be in bed. Let's be honest, I need my beauty sleep. Most of the time it's a cereal bar on the way to work or uni. However, I rarely miss out on my breakfast fix as I will often drag breakfast into lunch or even dinner, brunch and 'brinner'. 

Sometimes I'm just not hungry that early, but why should I miss out?

Breakfast just tastes so much better when you don't have it at breakfast time. I don't know whether it's the slightly rebellious nature of it, or if it's just student mentality, but it just works. 

I'd rather have a boiled egg mid-morning and skip lunch. 

Sometimes I have a fry up for dinner, as it's just too heavy in the morning. 

Sometimes I get a toast craving at 9 o'clock in the evening. 

My favourite however, is cereal late at night, when I finish work or whether dinner was just unsubstantial (because it wasn't a breakfast.) Coco Pops with ice cold milk, past midnight, is simply mind blowing. 

To many, this just sounds like an unhealthy lifestyle and to be fair, it probably is, particularly in light of the not so surprising revelations about processed meat in the media this week, but in my household we don't eat to live, we live to eat.

So, I'm particularly enjoying going to Blackhams Tea Rooms at the minute, do you know why? 

Because they serve breakfast all day, every day. 

If it's 12 o'clock or 3 o'clock you can still get a good fry up. None of this McDonalds nonsense where they only serve McMuffins until 10.30 am .. what is with that? 

What's more, if you have a breakfast baguette, they even put salad on the side to make you feel less guilty about the calories. What more could you want?

So you can keep your kisses in the morning Dean, I Iike my eggs with bacon and toast at any hour of the day. 

Where the magic began..

For a significant part of my childhood, my ambition was to be an animator. This was not proposed to me at some cheap careers talk however, oh no. From the age of about nine, I was inspired by the legend that is Walt Disney. I would spend hours redrawing his characters from my beautiful collection of Disney books, into sketch books, onto scraps of paper, onto Christmas and Birthday cards. I'd delicately trace my fingers round their outline in the books, be enthralled by their vibrant colours, enchanted by their magic, dreaming that one day I would join Disney, and create characters of my own. 

However, by around the age of fourteen, my ambitions came to a tragic end. Not because it was an impossible dream but because the magic of hand-drawn illustration was slowly dissolving. My childhood had seen a technological revolution and it didn't spare art. So today, it was no surprise for me to read that Disney finally officially announced it would not be making any 2D hand-drawn animation for the foreseeable future. 

For me, the magic is in the talent; the way something made from the stroke of a single pencil could be made to come alive by the person behind them. It captured me and still captures me to this day, with wonder, with innocence but mostly nostalgia. There is nothing inspiring about the real and the ordinary, and that is what  modern day animators are trying to create. 

Walt Disney for me is an inspiration. He has touched more childhoods than any other animator with iconic figures such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, he has given young girls all over the world the fairytale dream with the likes of Snow White and Cinderella, and he has truly captured the imagination of the world. Such power is unimaginable and will never be replicated; everything he stood for is at risk of becoming extinct. 

Everything is about money today. This declaration has come after their last hand-drawn film, The Princess and the Frog, only, I repeat only, made the equivalent of £178m whilst the likes of 3D movie, Bolt, made £310m. This is tragic. How can you put a price on a childhood? I don't doubt that the younger generation prefer the 3D computer animations, but in the words of Walt Disney 'You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway' and he is right; I would still pay £10 to go and see a hand-drawn film at the cinema, where I can see a little part of the creator in it's characters, as opposed to the mind numbingly bland computer animations. The reason today's children don't appreciate simple, traditional illustration is because this is what's been bred into them, their imaginations were not nurtured, but corrupted with bright lights and glowing perfection. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not stuck in the Victorian age, and Shrek and Toy Story are undeniably classics in their own right, but there is nothing more warming and refreshing than the individual grooves of wood made by an ink pen, or the slightly scratchy nature of coloured pencils, or even the grainy colours. It's authentic. It's raw. It's an art. 

Technology seems logical. Of course it does, as opposed to drawing by hand every turn of the head, every movement of a hand, every blink of an eye, you can simply copy and paste, Photoshop and crop, but this isn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to spend hours creating one single character, memorising every single wrinkle, every single freckle, every single hair on their head. 

Anybody can create this: 

But it takes true heart and soul to create something like this: 

Walt Disney once said 'I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.' Indeed it will end with a mouse also, but one with buttons that is glued to an imaginatively inferior, robotic hand . 

This is where the magic ends. 

Finally a reason to hate Bieber.

I've always felt bad for hating this guy. I mean I couldn't stand his music, and there was something about his smug little face, but I never felt I had a just reason to actually hate him as a person. Now however, the arrogance has burst through the mop of hair, which is now slickly greased into a quiff, and it's bubbling over for all to see.

Many of you will have heard of his latest antics; the Canadian child star was two hours late for his debut concert at the O2 earlier this week, causing tears among young, obsessed fans and anger from chaperoning parents. 

There are many rumours going round, several of which I don't doubt are exaggerated, but the basic gist of it was that he'd had a heavy night the night before, woke up late and hungover, then threw a strop to the effect of 'I'm the star, I'll go out when I want to' and stubbornly played video games in his room. Further to this, when he did eventually go out on stage, he spent less than 10 seconds with a competition winner, and refused to give her a hug because he 'didn't have time'. 

Safe to say, he may be 19 but he's still throwing his toys out of the pram. 

This kind of behaviour makes me sick. The reason he is where he is, is thanks to his fans and what's more, most of them are aged 12 and below; he's completely crushed their dreams. Obsessed fans are dangerous. One only needs to remember the calls The Samaritans received from distraught Take That fans struggling to deal with their break up. It sounds funny, but it's true. Bieber has the power to truly mess up young girls. 

When did he earn the rights to diva antics? I mean we all criticise divas like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey, but at least they have the talent to justify their behaviour. It doesn't make it right but it does make it understandable. Bieber however is a pathetic little pip squeak whose been delicately placed in a pop bubble. There was no hard work involved to achieve all he has, everything has been handed to him on a fine china plate and he's now exploiting his career at  his fans expense.

To be fair, we shouldn't be surprised. It's the classic child star gone wrong scenario, their childhoods were stifled in favour of fame and now they're rebelling, pushing boundaries. Too much too young and in a few years time, he'll inevitably follow in the footsteps of the Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen twins, to the child star graveyard that is rehab. The glowing flame of boyish charm simply extinguished with a single gust of conceit. 

He will be the sole cause of his downfall. He couldn't ask for anything more, it's not like his career has started dwindling and he's giving up. He's simply choosing to prick his bubble. He doesn't want to be the squeaky clean boy next door any more and there are signs already: his drug use, the tragic failure of his acoustic album, his frequent twitter rants at fellow celebrities...

This is just the start. Prepare for the Bieber empire to crumble. He's not the first, and he certainly won't be the last corrupted child star to hit the headlines.