Tongue-Tied

Sometimes, however hopped up, prepped, caffeinated, boozy or buzzing you are, you're lost for words.

This doesn't happen to me much. I can talk a lot of talk, even when someone is really hard work, even if I want to be elsewhere, even if I've had NO sleep and just want to be alone. There's always stuff to say, and say animatedly, even if it's just about the weather.

So I found myself a little dumbstruck yesterday when, at a good friend's wedding, I joined the other people seated at my table in wilting silence on a couple of occasions, unable to muster even the slightest unique comment on the enervating weather. It had all been said. It was hot. Very hot. We were eating soup and perspiring. It was really nice soup.

More and more I wonder if it's just the apathy of age that inevitably makes you far too comfortable with yourself to bother in such situations?

Unlike when I was perhaps 23, I am more than happy to embarrass myself in front of a stranger I'll never meet again. I know what I can get away with, and I know where I stand in terms of charm and looks on the social scale. I'm not the hottest, but I can switch it on when I want to get away with stuff. I have so far learned this simple approach when impressing someone new:

Appearance:
1. Groom / pluck etc. (hair needs to see a brush more than once a day)
2. Flatter. If, you're a woman, no leggings unless you're 12. If you're a man. No leggings. Ever.
3. Hold yourself like you absolutely intended this ensemble to work and you're pleased by it
4. Take your time and don't fumble / drop stuff (this continues to be my biggest challenge)

Manner:
1. Eyes. It's all about the eyes. Hold them just a little longer than you want to, not quite long enough to be cheeky. Just enough to make a moment, and make it about them. Pick up on the clues they give you and refer to earlier parts of your conversation for double listening points.
2. Smile like everything is just about to be funny.
3. Combine these two with as much animation as you can muster for the boring subject
4. Do fun things with your voice. Deep means serious. Lots of inflection for the lighter points. Keeps them interested. Don't talk too quickly - it gives the impression you don't even think you're worth the time.
5. Speak properly. Like your mother always wanted you to. Like my mother always wanted me to.

Now sometimes, all of this, perfectly executed, still just isn't enough. Usually I find it's when I genuinely fancy someone and ultimately feel at a disadvantage. But I reckon it's worth going through the motions anyway, if they're fanciable enough. I just always make the mistake of being unable to execute any of the above with aplomb when I believe someone 'must know' my feelings and 'must therefore see right through me' and 'am therefore up to no good' Can't help it, but we're all the same, right?

Now, in a few years time I'm sure I will be looking at this and telling you my simple approach is to be sincere and honest, and not to bother with the silliness of it all. However, this is only for when I have a nice husband who knows who I am and doesn't mind me as a person at all.

Ultimately everyone appreciates sincerity in others. On the other hand, it just doesn't seem very nice if your sincerity manifests itself as 'I'm comfortable in my life and do not require you for anything. I don't know you and we probably won't meet again so I probably won't bother talking to you'. I do TRY not to give this impression when I've just met someone, and hopefully you do too.

Everyone just has to put a little work in, to think about what they're doing. This just doesn't have to extend to ANYONE you happen to pass on the street.

Perfect examples of my latter 20s radicalism manifests itself in my habit of wearing clothes I've long outsized, smearing eye makeup whilst performing urgent contact lens care on a train or perhaps revealing one days worth of underarm growth in the partaking of a big stretch. Please don't take me for a slob. I just know what I can get away with. I know what I did not know when I was 20 years old: that not everyone is paying attention to my underarms all the time. And frankly if they are, wouldn't that just make them a twat, anyway?

So, frankly, back to the wedding and our lacklustre, overheated dinnertime discourse... there I was, wilting next to an equally overheated schoolfriend and the taciturn older brother of my friend, the bride. Perhaps it was the prosecco making me paranoid, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the silent gentleman was on the verge of hysterics at my futile attempts at small talk. The man is in the habit of climbing European mountains on his weekends. He understands mortality in it's most basic form, racing through ravines notorious for sudden rockfalls, scaling sheer cliff faces in ripping cold winds.... he needs no words. He needs no small talk. He is endowed with an insight into the true nature of things....

Or at least, this is everything my little mind assumed, as I knocked back wine like water and felt the perspiration blooming off my peers. The fact of the matter is, I had no idea what was going through his head, but it's highly likely that it was a) nothing or b) a similarly frantic search for sophisticated conversational material. You see this is the problem with weddings. You bump into some people and make the most remote connections. But when you are put next to people, they've already been assumed for you, and this makes the whole reward of random connection and banter that much less satisfying, and that feels much less worthwhile.

I thought this might be the case with a set up date. I've joined an online dating site. Please don't judge me, but I'm 27 years old and it's been nearly a year since my last date, over two since I last got intimate with someone. It's time I stopped moping over a long-lost lover that wasn't right (and is now marrying someone else) and forced myself into a few more situations! The connection here - and not converse to the wedding seating plan - is that you take away the uncertainty of a chance meeting and do your damnedest to hit it off with someone in a night. Then, if one of you never calls, it's utterly clear what they thought of you. Because that's the unspoken agreement.

My first date was on Tuesday, but unfortunately I think I liked the chap far too much to consider mucking him about. This may also prove a problem with the three more dates I have lined up this week, provided none of them are planning on acting like pigs. This has however, already put me in the mindset where I'm framing for the next romantic encounter around every bend, whether I know it or not. Consequently, when innocently giving my telephone number to a fellow wannabe journalist last night, the atmosphere went a little bit odd the moment he saved it into his phone. I went red and started jabbering - lost for words again. This was mostly because I'd thought he was married and had a sudden horrified moment of feeling very inappropriate. I made my excuses and scarpered.

I suppose what I'm trying to wrap this up with is that you can find yourself in any situation, and by and large people will do their best to make you feel comfortable. When they don't, it's utterly disarming and can throw you completely off your stride - and is yet a poignant reminder that this isn't a game. Socialising is not a formula, and the moment you treat it as such, you lose the very vulnerability, sincerity and enjoyment human encounters can afford.

As I left the wedding party last night, the radiant bride nudged me and asked if I'd been talking to a certain chap. He was single, apparently, and VERY nice. I shrugged blankly and said I wish I had come across him, but never mind. It was then I realised her gesturing across the room to the man she'd been wafting my way.

It turns out he wasn't married. I'd just given him my number.

On making a career in UK radio... as a woman

Not THAT many years ago, when I was beginning my career in the male-dominated workforce of commercial radio imaging, back when each station had a producer, and each producer had a sound, I did feel that expressing femininity was a vice.

Luckily I was too poor to be seriously into the grooming / shopping stalwarts of the conditioned Glamour-magazine reader, and so the adoption of a non-gender specific clothing style and blokey social manner for work was easy. I felt I had to look the part, I guess.

But regardless of what I was wearing, and whether I secretly loved high heels and a little black dress, I knew what I wanted to do. I knew how it felt to strive to do something unique with sound, something that worked – that made me excited, that made somebody feel something when they heard it and furthermore gave me that good feeling that comes from just rising above yourself and your own body. What I cared about most of all was the wonderful feeling of speaking to people, albeit invisibly, when I heard something I’d invented on a stolen copy of adobe, in my bedroom, on some cheap as chips headphones, play on the radio and just somehow… work. No matter that I wasn’t being paid, no matter that I didn't see many other women doing it.

When someone DID decide to pay me, a station production job followed. That could be a lonely role for anybody, and in a strange city where I knew nobody, doubted my ability (quite rightly at times) & was desperately homesick, that blokey community of producers welcomed me to the fold as one of them, and although we were dotted at disparate stations all around the country, there was a great solidarity in calling each other up at half six on a Friday, boasting about how many hours work we had left. I only ever felt proud of being a woman, and if I felt alone, it was less to do with that than a general lack of contemporaries.

It’s not to say that there weren't times where I didn’t feel a little uncomfortable that someone called me babe. Sometimes I felt concessions were made for my mistakes, and wondered if it was because of my sex. Sometimes when I struggled to speak up or express myself confidently, I worried that I had to work harder at it than a man might to be heard. But then I realised that I didn't want to have an excuse, and I didn't allow myself concessions.

The social side was always a tad more complicated, but they made room for me and although something made me feel that I wasn’t quite one of them, I think a lot of the time it was my own burgeoning sense of otherness. But that’s fine and to an extent we all have our stock identities in a group, whether it’s the young one, the grouchy one, the musician, the rookie, everyone’s future boss or… the girl.

Age and sex seem to be interesting factors in a new social context. On a night out with other women, in a casual meeting, in the workplace… How long do you find it, as a woman, before the others have directly or indirectly find out your age, whether you have children, and if so, how many?

I resent this, still. I find it disarming in a professional context, to be asked, and then obliged to answer. For in theory I have nothing to hide. I was a young woman, not long out of university when I started paid work. I progressed quickly thanks to the opportunities given and taken. I worked hard. Now, it is less of an issue. I’m in a job more appropriate to my age now, I’m not above my position, whatever that is deemed to be. I have no husband, no children. Perhaps she made a choice? I hear them wonder, as I hear myself wonder just the same, internalising the thoughts we all learn to think.

As for age, I had a male colleague, much younger, progressing quickly up the ladder, passionate, talented and… in the true style of a male imaging producer, just a little cocky about the power he had over sound, and the command that could have over a passing listener. For years he was talked down to, made to feel like the kid, held in his rightful place by the older members of the pack. This is was important, because lessons must be learned and they only come with time, but it makes me wonder what it is about these bright young things that startles us, inspires in us the need to temper, nuture and guide? He still has a chip on his shoulder about his age, but I’ve never seen him come into his own as much as when treated as the adult he is. It just goes to show, if you give someone something to fight against, they’ll fight it. If you tell them you believe it doesn’t hold them back, they won’t let it hold them back.

And I relate this to the context of being a lone woman amongst men. There have been too many respectful colleagues along my career path so far to make the disrespectful ones significant.

It WAS lonely. Sometimes days would go by with me having at least once taken to sobbing alone in my studio (oh the dignity afforded by a studio!) but when I had no equivalent woman to aspire to, some of my biggest champions and heroes have been men.

Whether it was somebody taking the time to help me hone my writing style, asking me to the pub, taking a chance on my inexperience and helping me learn from my mistakes, coaching me patiently on the finer points of studio recording and sound dynamics, or even putting something a little wooly to air, just because they’d known I did my best as a producer – these are the people that never made me anything less than proud to be a woman, to feel I could rise above any inherent misogyny in this industry.

My lonely ‘only girl’ days were gone when I joined a nearly all-women team in a new role. By that time I believe I was surer of myself and who I was, and thus utterly comfortable to one moment be utterly disinterested in someone’s new shoes, and raving over some pretty flowers the next. Such are the idiosyncracies of any person, whatever sex.

Being a woman in minority taught me that you must have confidence in yourself regardless, and that if you feel it is holding you back, it is not because everyone feels you should be held back. It is because a few sorry people do, and they have gotten to you.

That’s not to say I’m not still prone to a sulk now and again, or feel alienated for my sex – it’s just that I don’t really care about the people who stoop to that. The thing I find most admirable in my audio colleagues is a willingness to rise above their situation, and pursue the beautiful sound!

I bothers me when I meet a woman who has let her ‘lone girl’ role define her. That’s not to say I have a problem with women who are proud of themselves and their brood of boys, it’s just that when that is combined with a sense of ownership of that situation, I don’t think it makes the group appealing to other women, and what’s more, it can define you more than the job can. The job. The thing you loved in the first place. The most important thing.

Most admirable are the women who just believe in what they’re doing, and forthrightly don’t give a damn about what anyone says. In my mind, the biggest part of imaging and audio production is about evoking a feeling. To translate that to the listener, you have to be sincere. And being sincere can be REALLY hard. In all honesty I don’t think it’s something you can ever stop working on.

Before this gets irredeemably producer-specific-wanky, I’ll wrap this up with that top notch Alice Walker quote:

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

In this context, I’ll take that as meaning the following:

It’s only a man’s world if you think it is! Go girls! Be a producer. Be the best goddam producer you can be!

And never stop working really hard at it.

Unpublished from 17/06... The Ones You Love, The One Love or the Free Spirit

17th June...

In my line of work, you generally feel like death on Friday morning, whether or not you've been out on the town the preceding night. You're going to be shaking, full stop. Whether it's from exhaustion or alcohol abuse is entirely arbitrary.

Last Friday morning I chose alcohol. As I raced for my train, just praying I'd make it through one more day without stuffing anything up too badly, the morning sun was glowering. My head was buzzing and spinning, my body crying out for another hour of sleep, and yet, as I fumbled deliriously for my oyster card, I noticed a handwritten poem, stuffed clumsily in my bag.

In a second my fancy overtook me. I must have been still inebriated, for there and then I managed to convince myself it had been slipped in there by a kindly friend or admirer the night before, for me to discover on my way home. What fresh delights awaited me? In spite of logic, my heart soared at this exciting prospect. In another instant, of course, I acknowledged that it was my own handwriting and my own, drunken, forgotten missive, placed there, with the aim of my discovering it at a later day. I presume.

Perhaps only because it was Friday, I found this not so much disappointing as hysterically funny. I wanted to share this, instantly, with someone. Pumped full of adrenalin and booze, it seemed the biggest shame not to be able to impart this merriment to my fellow passengers. And yet, writing this back now, it seems less than amusing an anecdote and I am glad I reconsidered.

But I did make me wonder why it is we are able to share some personal moments so openly, and yet treat others with such vital reserve.

That same day (hark, before the glorious bell tolled for the weekend just passed) I was made to think about this once more.

22nd July....

Unfortunately I abandoned the post and we shall never know just what I was about to get at there. However, I know it was something to do with a magazine article I'd read. I think I was going to get at something about how sharing certain details gives you a sense of self - the corners of the prism through which you view the world and through which it views you back.

And what's more, it seems to change every day. Not so much when you're older, perhaps, but we have hobbies, interests, anxieties that all bounce off each other to create one persona or another, and isn't it funny how that varies, depending on who you're with.

Indeed, surely everyone you meet influences you a little in a new direction, or triggers the next domino of an effect that sends you on a new, unpredictable trajectory. Whether you keep up with them or not, spend years apart and reconvene, they've influence you, shaped you. It's comforting, isn't it, to find we are not so invulnerable to one another.

Another thought I'd had around this time, followed on from a conversation with a contributor who'd just published a memoir of her relationship. She'd openly confessed to me that the book had caused them a problem, that the marriage was under strain, but that the process of revisiting their love story had been vital to her in retracing their steps, discovering where they were now. I think she felt it was necessary to keep their love alive, for in spite of best, romantic ideals, we cannot exist outside our history, and when a history is built together, there comes a point where it is the glue of a relationship, the value of a relationship. You cannot reinvent or rewrite it, for it is shared and honest. It's just there, an intractable framework for your identity together. Frightening then, it must be, to find yourself alone, or a stranger. Or indeed to uncover something in that history that you were unaware of and to see how it changes everything.

To free spirits, those brave or adventurous enough to have had more than one love, I'm sure the sequence defines you, that you carry former lovers each as a girder in a framework of your growing self. I hope, indeed, that it shall be this way for me, but for those who have endured the years - even with the slowest, plodding, enduring of attachments - those are the most touching, the gamble, the test, and I hope, the prize.

The Family, London and Friends-Who-Don't-Rate-Themselves and Meeting Heroes

Here we go then, into July and after WEEKS of rain, the sun has reappeared. Will it stay? Will it go? The nice thing about this is that we definitely cannot take this for granted, especially since it's the weekend and there is suddenly so much scope for outdoorsy things to take place. Everyone's stepping out looking warily at the sky, their bags packed with suspiciously concealed cardigans. Sunglasses are scarce - who would make such a bold statement?

My garden is mental. My sister's going to bring her mower round.

June saw my entire family plus boyfriends / girlfriends / husbands manage the feat of coordinating a week's holiday in the Isle of Wight. Exotic, I know. I counted the dog as my own plus one, and spent each morning running by the sea or on the downs, so I certainly didn't mind being the only lonely ride (just thought I'd get that in there)

It's interesting to see how you all bump along as adults. I've two sisters and a brother who each brought the other half. My favourite observation was upon the preponderance of fractious male passengers and 'rising above it' lady drivers. I'll make an exception here for my little sister's boyfriend of 5 years, who has earned this title most through being the world's most laid-back person. I noticed how the chaps all have a special noise for when  they 'just don't think you're parking right'. There's the nose puff, the rapid inhalation, the shhhhhhhh, the oh, oh, oh, or my favourite, and my ex-boyfriend's special 'eeeaaeeeeee'

Come on, we're women drivers, not toddlers.

Speaking of the ex-boyfriend, I DID crawl back to him two years after breaking up with him. Well there hadn't been anyone else and he IS a special person and he WAS very good to me. I knew I needed the time out. If I hadn't we'd probably be married and contemplating divorce by now, as I wondered just what I'd missed. But no, I took the two years and thought I was over it for a while, but only now I realise that for the sheer guilt of how bad I'd made him feel, I was never going to be the first to move on.

He met a new girl in January. We'd texted a little since, friendly stuff, how's the family, oh good apart from the cancer and that. He sent me a text on holiday last month asking how I was. I was pretty excited, as I thought this was it, he'd realised she wasn't the one and was going to forgive me and give it a go again. No. no, no, no, no, no......

He's engaged.

After what, 6 months?

I said, 'Congratulations, I'm happy for you', and left it at that. Thank god you only have to have these conversations via text these days. It afforded me the privacy of being able to sob in peace amongst the strange stone garden ornaments of our Isle of Wight holiday home - have you ever tried having a broken heart with a garden gnome within three feet? You should try it. Anyway, he couldn't have chosen a better time, because you can't sulk on family holidays. At least not unless you're 14, which is pretty much ALL you do on family holidays.

So we continued to have a great week, celebrating both my parents turning 60, enjoying some normality before my sister's chemo started and generally not taking anything for granted, the way you do when everything is OK.

It's a strange, bittersweet feeling now. The cancer cast a shadow on us, made us all look at life as little more precious. We've all become a little bigger about things. How much the world seems to have changed in just 3 months. We cannot be wasteful with moments now - it's been a warning shot.

My brother and his girlfriend made it all the way from New York, which was grand, only after the miserable temperatures, Isle of Wight culinary options and general rain, I think she's probably anxious about her offer to move back over here with him. Hence I spent a lot of time applauding the modernity and convenience of London, in contrast.

Having done so, it rather made me realise I quite like London after all. OK, so the rent is abysmally high, everything smells a bit mouldy and you can never EVER seem to completely escape noise, but I too would feel that same anxiety  as our New Yorker living anywhere else. Here there are 24 hour shops, trains that take you from one end to the other (on a good day) and more pubs, cafes, restaurants and shops than you could ever step in, more museums and parks than you could probably get round in a year of weekends.

I am a South East London dweller, as is my sister and her husband. When I see someone else is too, I feel a quiet sense of comradeship with them. It's like an inner nod: "Oh, you're from South East? Where? Ah, yes, I run near there" For the inhabitants of your Borough share your silent wisdom on the place, enjoy the same amenities, walk the same streets, and yet you never manage to bump into each other, which is the most wonderful thing. There seems to be something compulsive about distance in this city, where we all pile atop one another. In manner we are cool, our minds detached, until something from the outside threatens our city as a whole. In that we are one Londoner together.

I might be talking about the Olympics. I might be talking about 7/7. If I was talking about the riots I'd have to expand upon that theory, for in that case we were four Londoners: People who were angry about perceived injustice, angry people, bored people and finally, most people. Most people didn't riot. Especially in Tooting Bec, where I lived at the time. As our city was razed on those balmy summer nights, I ran down to the common to find dog walkers, canoodling couples and outdoor yoga enthusiasts unmoved by the unrest occurring just up the road. This is the strange combination of devastation and determination that springs out of such diverse and broad communities.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT....What I also like about South East London, is that it's very easy to get out of, and find you're in Kent.

At the weekends, I love a to race into the countryside, or check out a castle with my Australian friend and Olde England / castle enthusiast. I also love a trip into Bromley. A normal town centre with normal shops and normal people. Not an irregular amount of noise. Not an irregular amount of prettiness.

A university friend has moved to London and lives just up the road now. She's lived alone for years, having stayed back in Nottingham for another masters, science phd, living in the property her mother invested in up there. But I've noticed a change in her over recent months and it bothers me.

She is by far one of the cleverest people I know. Tall, blonde and bubbly, she can hold a conversation for hours and keep the energy going. She's just a fun person to be around, and yet her confidence seems to have plummeted and I'm not sure what to do about it.

When we met yesterday the first thing she did was apologise for leaving it so long. I think she's been sad and shutting herself away. We've all been there. She's got a job interview on Monday, but she says she probably won't get it. She's miserable at work (although she has a great job on paper) because she thinks not having the full phd means people won't consider her application for promotion. So she didn't apply! By the way, she would have finished the pHD, but she fell in love with her fucking supervisor who is frankly a complete dick. Anyway, she chose to leave. I cannot tell you what a waste this was. I'm not over-egging it when I say she is brilliantly clever. She was particularly brilliantly clever at that. He knew it too.

Anyway, not to get bogged down in the detail, I was astounded by her dedicated bias to a negative view of her life. I pointed out to her all the things she had going for her and she began to cry. At one point she said to me I had a really good life, and I had to point out that a) my sister has cancer and b) the man I wanted to marry is marrying someone else and c) I am pretty damn unhappy at work right now, but yes, apart from that IS a good life. But any good life has it's troubles. She doesn't seem to think anyone else has problems though. I don't think hearing anyone else's troubles makes her feel less alone.

A few months ago I tried to set her up with a friend but it didn't work out and they just left it, which was a shame. I don't really think she needs a man to make her feel better though. I don't really think I can make her feel better without a bit of willing on her own part. What I just don't get is how someone so smart can not see how much they have going for them.

And she is no exception. So many of my girlfriends are the same - held back by their own humility and inability to realise just how wonderful they are. It strikes me as a pretty valuable trick to have learned, that if you just go through the motions, if you force your body to do what your heart cannot, you'll follow in spirit soon enough.

The other day I had to demo something up with one of my broadcasting heroes. It was a terrifying moment and frankly I didn't want to do it. I wanted someone else to meet him, because a) they say you should never meet your heroes and b) I am always saying 'they say you should never meet your heroes' and c) there's probably a reason for that.

Anyway, it was pretty hilarious. I was terrified, but when he walked into the office I flipped into my usual fake confidence act, all big posh voice, smiles, eye-contact, briskness and handshakes. The great thing about this is that it's flawless to tell the difference on first meeting. People just think you're a confident person. Unfortunately, when you're being observed by a bunch of people who know you otherwise, it's just a tad embarrassing.

But my point is, if you act the part, generally you start feeling the part.

This was probably a bad story to wander onto, as I was just a little keyed-up and nervous over the whole thing to genuinely give the impression of uber-confidence. Plus, I think it might have been quite intimidating, because you always build your heroes up to be really invincible, don't you? So anyway, it was all very brisk, i did the demo, didn't tell him I was a fan or anything, tried to speak slowly and smile, and then when he left he got caught between a stepladder and door in the studio airlock and sort of had to winch himself out. I said bye and thank you a lot.

Not the best example.

Anyway, as for my friend. I'm going to drag her along to every bloody dull social event I can, just so she can see how crap everyone feels about their lives, and force her to get in the habit of bigging herself up and defining herself the way you have to do when you just meet people. It's scary, no doubt. It never stops being scary, but your friends always know you better, don't they. You have to rely on that.