It had been one of those weeks.

Is Confidence Hard To Find?

Everyone has issues that they chose not to confront; Whether it is to do with family, work or just the issues you find in yourself. These problems get pushed down to the bottom of the priority list, other things are just more “important”. They are either too painful; too much effort or something that you see as unsolvable.

I have a hat that, whether you believe it or not, changed my life. It made me stand up for what I believed in, showed me I didn’t actually have to be dictated to and put up with it. The short version of the story is that I bought a hat, a black hat; my first hat. The moment I bought this I knew that it was my new superpower.

My great-grandma used to wear a hat wherever she went. Granted, we both chose a very different style of hat. Yet she was known and remembered for her eccentric hats, and if one day that is one of the things that I am remembered for I will die happy. Some may say it is just a hat, but you are wrong. It has sentimental value, like a locket or an expensive vase. This hat showed me that if I was worried about what people said about me, then I had bigger problems than them. I worried that what they would say would be true. But I then realised that the people who say things to that extent are not the people I would want to be friends with anyway.

The hat gave me a new confidence. If I wanted to randomly visit Highgate in London then that is what I did. If I wanted to go and talk to the lovely lady in the bookshop about Enid Blyton then I would. Magic hat. It made me curious, and made it ok to be curious. I will travel to Kentish Town, Notting Hill and the BBC Centre, all to see if they are how I imagined they would be. 9 times out of 10 they are not at all what I imagined, but that makes it more of an adventure.

The hat inspires an independence that is usually hidden. It is still there, it just needs coaxing out sometimes. Some of my friends cannot understand how I can go into London on my own, to them it is weird that I am not with a large group of people all the time, but I am not like that. I have a beautiful group of friends; Sometimes I will be with them for two or three weeks straight and we will do everything, other times I won’t see them for months on end, but that works for us. If I am on my own, I don’t have to rush; I don’t have to be told which direction to walk in, and if I am bored I don’t have to worry that someone else doesn’t.

My hat is like an imaginary friend. It gives me support if I wear it, but also it is the reason that I want to be better. Once again, I know it is only a hat; an inanimate object but you all do the same. By buying that bag/watch/make-up you see your life getting a little bit better, you are made more confident when you take it out for the first time. The reason I bought this hat was because it was my first hat and it came along at a time of need, when I needed comfort from something inanimate and non-biased. People will always have an opinion on what is said but this hat taught me to face things head on and in my own time; I started dressing differently, to dress how I wanted to dress. I am not saying I dyed my hair pink and started ripping tights, I just became the right ‘Character’ which without the hat would have taken a lot longer to get to. Happy hat buying!

My lack of faith in politics.

2013 means that I am getting older, unfortunately though getting older means that I am more aware of everything that goes on around me. When you are little you don't have to worry about 'Adult Problems', you don't have to worry about money/work/THE WORLD. Then you start moving away from your childhood home and realise it's not actually very nice in the big bad world, I want home again.

I have just finished my first year at University. I have decided that going back in September would not be beneficial at all, my course is lacking and I am in 8 hours a week for £8000 a year. I would love to say that the rise in tuition fees, even though Clegg said they wouldn't, were my decision to leave, but I would be lying.

The local elections have just passed and it made me really question what I wanted from a Government. I found it really hard. Whilst deciding which party to vote for, I went through many a mindset; maybe I just shouldn't vote, it doesn't seem to do a lot of good. I think this is what a lot of people are thinking at the moment, but this is the wrong mindset. We are a society that generally gives up easily. If something is too hard we step away; if we believe that those with more power will have more influence we cower. It is easy to have a deep and meaningful debate at a dinner party about David Cameron, and easy enough to divide opinions, but what do we really do about it?  I am 19 and I don't feel that my vote is worth much to the Government, it is only one vote, someone who knows more about it will vote correctly. Right? How am I meant to know? Who should I actually be voting for? The tories? Labour? UKIP?

In the end the hardest decision is not deciding which to vote for, it is deciding if I actually believe in a party enough to prove they are what they say they are, I need to believe that they are going to do what they say. It is a lot of responsibility to place your beliefs in one politician who occasionally visits a hospital/prison/school, take your pick they've all done it.

The scary thing is that on the other hand, what if your one vote was the deciding factor? I know that this isn't really how it works per say but even so. What if I vote for UKIP because I have strong views on Immigration, I think, yes this is the party for me. Yet, three years down the line...nothing, no change. What was then the point of me travelling to the local polling station to tick that particular box?

I'm not sure how this can be solved, but I don't want to surrender my vote just because they cannot be trusted. It's cyclical; If i don't vote, the party I am against will gain power, yet if I do vote they won't come through on their promises. It makes my brain all fuzzy, what is the point?

Whether it comes across or not, I really am finding it difficult to have any faith in the Government at the moment, it could be such a great asset, but it certainly isn't at this point in 2013.

Train talk.

I woke up at 4 this morning to get a train at 530. This was so I could be in London and on a train by 730. I am on the train. I am hallucinating because I am overly tired, BUT I cannot even tell you how excited I am. 

I haven't even drawn you a picture today. Just given you a photograph of my tickets. I do apologise. I'll have a little nap and we shall reconvene here in about an hour. By then I shall be replenished... Possibly. 

In 5 hours I will be on a train...

I am genuinely excited.
I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year and just fell in Love with everything that it had to offer.
I am unable to make it to the Fringe this year BUT I am off on a tiny holiday to Edinburgh tomorrow.
I should be asleep right now but i'm not for two reasons.

1- I am completely convinced that if I fall asleep now I will sleep through my alarm. Now if you know  
     me you will know that I wouldn't let this happen, but there is always that little voice saying "Heeeheeee I'm going to make you miss the train you're BOOKED onto" in a sort of tuneful taunt.

2- I am overly excited but my tiredness is causing this to morph into a sort of still, numb sensation. Perfectly happy with excitement bubbling. The only thing I can compare it to is when you are making bread, the yeast reacts with everything and starts kicking off. I admit, it is not a very good comparison but is the only one I could muster at 12:13 on the 15th of May 2013.

Edinburgh Fringe last year was like...The warmest, cuddliest hug you could ever receive.

I like you all enormously.
You will all know if I stay awake because I will keep blogging and the posts will become more and more erratic.

This is a very small snapshot of right now.

Characters.

James

James had a habit of looking like he had something to say. Nine times out of Ten he would just walk away. But on the odd occasion he would tell me about his struggles as a mime. 

Children should be seen and not heard?

As a show of control and dominance, children living in Victorian Britain were seen and not heard.

More than a century later and today young people are definitely heard (they make sure of that); they also crave to be seen.

Now of course I am not talking about all young people, just the small majority who think they warrant new-formed respect from adults in the arrogant way they pursue these ideas.

It is the small majority that have produced unnecessary change, change that will be long-forgotten by the people who forced these rules.

This leaves the rest of us to clear up a mess that could have been prevented but, due to human rights, has been let free.

In war-time Britain, society wasn’t so rights-orientated; people had actual issues to worry about rather than knife crime by ten-year-old boys in broad daylight, and as a result of that, we were a country that proudly pulled together.

But now with the government making sure everyone is happy, they are trying to make us all equal, making themselves look feeble as they step back and let children (which I think is the only name they deserve to be called) take precedence over those in society who actually need support.

Now, I am not saying bring back the Victorian ideas. I think as a society we are past the stage where we can make decisions like this because it has gone too far.

As it won’t be children who make the first move towards change, it will have to be the rest of us.

How? I don’t know, but I do know the cowardly weakness we have taken towards teens needs to stop.

I am 18 and I know that if I walk into a shop with a friend the shop assistant will nine times out of ten be staring, willing us to steal something because that is ‘obviously’ what we do.

It’s not. Upbringing, education, motivation...The people who steal have obviously had none of these at a particularly high level and if they have, the arrogance they would need to possess to still commit a crime is laughable.

We obviously need to have a jolly good think about how we can force some change.

Little and often and we might be on to something.

Double the fun at present time.

Some may say having a birthday near Christmas is a negative thing, although I disagree. My birthday is exactly four weeks before Christmas Day and I have never had any reason to want to change it. Why space out birthdays and Christmas when they can be placed comfortably close together for double the fun?

Plus the novelty of Christmas starts to wear off once you hit the age of about 11. The excitement is still there; it just appears in different ways. Whereas toys used to be what Father Christmas placed in my stocking, now I receive clothing and other quirky gifts. Although of course none of the later gifts in my life will be used half as much as my Tiny Tears was.

In fact I find it quite sad that at 17 (nearly 18) I can no longer write to Father Christmas, and ask him nicely if he would please bring me a Barbie Doll, or a Fishers Price Play Kitchen. I still love the fact it has its own fridge, dishwasher and oven, which need only two AA batteries to bring it to life.

Yet unfortunately these gifts are no longer ‘acceptable’ for someone of my age, and to be honest I should have grown out of them. But that is not the point.

Another issue with being older and being old enough to earn your own money is you can no longer ask your grandma to go out and buy your mother’s present for you. You now need to find something she will actually want, which is harder than it sounds. A bottle of shampoo here, a photo of my brother and I there, and soon you have nothing else in mind to buy her.

Mothers are great at showing complete surprise, though, once they open their gift to reveal another candle. Just the idea her children have gone out of their way to buy her something is more than enough to complete her Christmas.

The wrapping of the present is the best bit. As the years go on it’s more a competition in our family rather than just something that needs to be done, with prizes given to those wrapped in the most sticky tape and with the neatest wrapping.

However the older I get, the more I enjoy just being with my family. Christmas Eve is the traditional hot chocolate in Arundel followed by how many crackers my 13-year-old cousin and I secretly pull without being noticed. Christmas Day is ‘present day!’ obviously, and Boxing Day is for bizarre games, played with my bizarre but wonderful cousins.

If I were a therapist I would probably say I was mad.

From beginning to end, from the end back to the beginning. Hurry. Hurry beyond the realms of “perfection” and find the perfection in imperfection. The superficial will then banish and the sublime will be restored once again. My brain is a whoosh, like a rollercoaster underwater. Manners and socks. Yes. Manners they are what are on my mind at the moment. Curiosity and questioning. The youth of today. Teens. Youngsters. Children (which is all they are). Enid Blyton seems a traditional way to go back to. So lets go and leave them behind, they warrant no real place in society. Better upbringing produces better behavior. Respect is the word. Forget the superficial you know. Take the festivities of Christmas. We all the big old house, the traditional decor, an aga and a huge fireplace. We want snow and beautiful surroundings. Most of all on this particular day we want more than 24 hours in order not loose a single minute with our families.

You can look, but I don’t want you talking to be. Love and hate are very strong words. Stephen fry is a depressive but I get to randomly have a one-person party in my own room, just because I can! Though your ribs are made of bones and a fire may solve your problems for a while they wont be gone forever. I cannot understand the ways of the world! Time and time again, ideas form, people jump on the good old bandwagon. A kooky idea and ‘boom’. Pages of scenarios...pages of writing that wont make the grade. Day in and day out we make breakfast for ourselves. How selfish? The idea that people want to spontaneously leap- frog is awe-inspiring. Keep leaping those frogs.

How I became friends with the gas man.

I have lived away from home now for a year, exactly a year and I have completely changed. I now have bills in my name and have to budget very carefully in order not to end up eating only plain pasta. This dramatic change means it is bizarre to go home and see the friends that have not yet left. They are who I was a year ago. I am not sure what it is that changed, it’s not an external feature that is instantly recognisable, but I have a feeling it is a new found maturity. It’s not that I feel more mature but maybe it just comes with this new independence; like a free gift for getting this far. Either way they are the old me and I am the future them.

Since being away I, to my mother’s horror have developed a taste for alcohol and not just wine, spirits. This doesn’t make me sound like the classiest of all young ladies but that is just what has happened. When at home my mother will tell me not to drink to much when I go out, I will ignore her and end up not remembering leaving the venue I was drinking in, turn up the next morning clear as day without a hangover confusing my mother in the process. She knows I drank a lot by the Facebook statuses all spelt incorrectly the night before but I seem fine on the outside. The truth is, I am fine. I do not get hangovers, unless my drink is spiked (which only happened once) apart from this I fall asleep after drinking and wake up ready for the day, seriously. One day it will hit me and I will want to die but for now I will jump out of bed as I do most mornings and not think about it just incase by thinking about it sets it off.

The thing about moving away from home is the sudden realisation of...No Rules. Apart from the rules society obviously and clearly states. But I mean now, It doesn’t matter what time I come home; it doesn’t matter if I have been smoking socially whilst I have been out, pontificating over the way our parents influence us in the early stages of development; it doesn’t matter if I vote differently to my family and it doesn’t matter if I forget I am a catholic. I was brought up in a middle class, catholic, fairly conservative household. Yet now I am gone it is different. I don’t agree with a lot of what the government say anyway, I am paying £9000 a year to be in University for only 8 hours a week, so I certainly have less faith in what they “propose” yet I am definitely not conservative. I may have gone to church when I was little but I have very little want to go now. The idea of faith confuses me just as much as politics does; If for example I believe in God, then why do I have to go to church each week to lament the fact that I believe in him, the process of belief is surely strong enough for this not be necessary. Either way I am not my mother/grandmother/father; scientifically I am a model made from bits and pieces of them but unfortunately only I will control what I believe and do. Which I think has to be the scariest thought of a parent. You can control every little part of a child’s life when they are growing up but they will eventually forget all the things that they were told were right and wrong and do whatever they see fit. 

I am soon to tell you about who I am.

What about now?

'I have a Typewriter. I have named her 'Tilda' because I would secretly like to be called Matilda'

So let me introduce you to 'Tilda'

Using our brains...productively.

"Somethings are best left to the imagination"

In the past there was this...

My name is emily and this is my face.

My name is emily. I am a writer. I have a typewriter and I write notes with questions written on them. Some people answer. Some don't. But more do than don't.