"Sometimes it's hard to walk in a single girl's shoes, that's why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun" - Carrie Bradshaw

Within the Broadcast Journalism course that I do at University, we have something called a Newsday. It basically gives us the chance to run round like headless chickens in our newsroom for one day a week providing radio news bulletins on the hour every hour. It can be incredibly demanding and stressful but also rewarding and I can safely say they are the best part of my week.

I worked 3 jobs over the summer holidays and spent most of my wages on smart dresses, trousers, tops, skirts and shoes to wear for these Newsday’s. We are encouraged to perform in a way that we would in a real newsroom, so being relatively smartly dressed is something that they ask.

Now, as I bought some pretty beautiful shoes with my hard earned wages, I feel they all deserve regular outings, and totter out of my flat in a selected pair in the assorted range of 4 inch heels every week – and always live to regret it. By the end of the day, I am not thinking about my feedback, the diaries I need to log when I get home or the food that I desperately need to eat. No. I am thinking about my poor, painful feet.

You see, these heels may make me feel pretty ‘Carrie Bradshaw – here to save the world one outfit and article at a time’, but by around lunchtime, all I want to do is slip my tootsy’s into a fluffy pair of slippers or ballerina flats.

Do I ever learn?

Men may carelessly say that we should “Take them off for a bit!” but any stiletto wearing woman out there knows that putting them back on again is just more painful than before! It’s best to suffer the original pain than endure sore soles and excruciating agony to put them back on again – that’s real stamina guys!

I can see from my disfigured feet that flat’s, well; they would be the more sensible option. Comfortable, less of a tripping hazard, time saving and sturdy (if you ever need to run after an interviewee down the road), but to me they just don’t have the same appeal. You don’t ever hear someone say “Ooh look at her plain black ballerina flat shoes, aren’t they gorgeous?”

On an everyday basis, I don’t like anything more than slipping my feet into a nice sweet pair of flats, but why order a Steak and Chips and then pass on the onion rings?

If you’re going to do something, do it properly. Don’t be half-arsed about it.

I will get to my point eventually.

What started this was when I started thinking about that point after breaking up with someone when you decide whether you can give it another go, or you’re just going to be friends. Whether you should just end the car crash relationship right there or see if there’s still something to hold onto.

Making this decision is like deciding whether to wear heels or flats.

Yes, the flats will be better for you in the long run. You won’t be in pain and it also means you can do so many more things than if you were balanced on 4 inch spikes. However, they just won’t feel as good as a pair of heels; that feeling of sheer happiness, confidence and fabulousness when you slip on a pair of heels. And even though you know it is going to hurt eventually, you still wear them over and over again.

I know from experience. The rush to say “live for the moment” can lead to us getting hurt again and again just because of the short-term aspects. Wearing your heels again and again within short period of time just leads to the heels no longer being bearable at all, yet we do it to ourselves anyway.

It’s the same in life as well, we may decide to play it safe, stay comfortable and protect ourselves from getting hurt or go all out for the sense of sheer happiness without thinking of the inevitable fall from grace. Wearing the flats just isn’t as appealing – is it better to have incredible happiness for moment than never at all?

So, what do you choose?

From this day forward, I will no longer choose heels but will not settle for flats either. I choose to go barefoot.

We can sometime be so busy running around in our heels or flats to really know where we are and what we are doing. We don’t see what we are walking all over never mind feel it. We lose all sensitivity to the world under our feet by disengaging ourselves with pointless things.

Does anybody else love the feel of sand under your feet on the beach when you slip off your shoes for the first time? That’s what I’m going for here. For us all to be a little more grounded, stripped back without the unnecessary. To not worry about the things we can’t control and savour the things that we can.

For there is no better accessory to an outfit than yourself, free of straps that hold you down and pain that you believe is inevitable by letting someone see the real you. You are yourself, and there is no one else quite as brilliant as you.

And no one will ever get you in a 50% off sale.

Live. Laugh. Love

(P.S I won't actually be walking around barefoot, and neither should you... It's cold outside!)

You can ask me the question now, Noel

 Okay, I just woke up from a really weird dream where I was a contestant on the Game show, Deal or No Deal. I have had this same dream a few times over the past couple of weeks and it basically follows the same kind of gist as the Channel 4 show. I always find myself at the beginning of the show where several names are being flashed up on screen, and every time my name gets picked. Cue clapping and a frantic excited reaction from myself, I am on Deal or No Deal after all! Noel goes through all the questions and asks me to confirm that I picked this box from random, to which I agree. Everything seems very normal - when I look in front of me there is my box, number 14 and the screen with all the money totals on it, from 1p to £250,000 and 21 other contestants. Behind me there are all of my friends in the audience. The little jingle plays and then Noel asks me to pick my first box, which I decide is going to be number 12. The box belongs to a woman called Dawn and she breaks the seal, and then lifts the lid. However, that's when it starts to get a little strange. Instead of seeing a flash of a red or a blue value of money, out pops one of my ex's. The audience ruptures into applause and I get the idea that he must be a low amount (and from what I remember from the relationship he wasn’t worth very much). Even after having this dream several times, I am still shocked when he steps out of the box and tells me everything I ever did wrong in the time we were together. Dawn then kicks him in the back, so that he falls to his knees and then proceeds to drag him by his foot out of the studio. Then, as if it were completely normal I get asked to pick my second box and I go for number 3. I don’t remember the man’s name but he opens the box. However, this time I am aware that another of my ex's will spring out and give me a lecture about how I was a terrible girlfriend. This particular box holds a Policeman I went out with for about two months over Christmas, but unlike the previous box, he just starts to sob and starts to beg for me to come back. I then give the contestant the nod and he kicks him in the back and pulls him off by his eyebrows (I’m guessing the eyebrows because I always plucked his eyebrows for him).


This continues and box after box opens revealing yet more boys I have ever flirted with, had a date with or full blown relationship. Some of the boys I don’t even know, which take up most of the red boxes, thus proving I have a terrible dating history, yet hopefully it is going to improve. One boy in particular is absolutely gorgeous yet he comes out the £50 box, so if I ever come across him, I know not to get involved.

One of the things that always seems to be the same are the things that these boys say I have done wrong. Pretty high on the list is the fact that I either never, or take ages to text back. You see the problem with me is that I get pre-occupied, not just when it comes to texting back but in everyday life. I always remember the time I went upstairs to my room, with the intention of tidying it, but half an hour later my Mum opened the door to find me drawing a face on a balloon. Another thing is that I am always pretty adamant that the relationship isn’t going to last very long. If all of your relationships to date had only lasted at most a month, I don’t think you would have much faith either. Both of these things I know about, and it didn’t take this 5th repetition of the dream to figure it out. Something that every boy said was that my immediate reaction to things getting a little hard is to finish it. I’m not going to try and deny this, I do. The way I see it is that we are young, and what is the point in staying in a relationship we are unhappy in? Plenty more better tasting fish in the Sea. (The irony is, is that I am allergic to fish)

One of the boys that jumped out, jack-in-a-box style was Lifeguard boy, who unsurprisingly came out of the £1 box, quite a lot more than he is worth in my opinion, but I suppose he had an alright face. Then there was Doll Face boy at 1p, and someone who I will call Actor boy who was £250. I got a particularly huge smile on my face from seeing these three being kicked in the back, probably more happiness than I should. But there was a boy that I felt a little sad at from seeing him in the higher amounts, because I knew that I shouldn’t have let him slip away.

Consistent with the TV game show, in between the groups of boxes I had phone calls from the banker offering me things like Cats and bottles of wine but I never accepted any of them. ‘Thank you Mr Banker that is very generous of you to offer me 3 Cats, but No deal’.


Then I get to my final two boxes; the one I chose at the start of the show number 14, and number 19. The amounts I have left are £250,000 and 10p, all or nothing, or in boy terms; Nicholas Hoult or Kerry Katona’s ex husband. The banker makes me a final offer and the chance to swap which I refuse. Noel reaches for the seal and tears it off. The audience is silent and it’s all intense. The box is opened... And I wake up! After all that, I wake up! This has happened every time, so I never have any chance to see what I end up with; my prince charming or a charming idiot.

What have I learnt from this dream? Ah well, that Noel Edmund’s shirts really are terrible, that I need to text people back quicker and that if a ex starts to list all the things that annoy them about you, kick them in the back.


Although this is completely unrealistic, and will only ever happen in my dreams - I hope, I don’t think I could cope seeing that many ex boyfriends within the space of forty-five minutes - it reasserted some of the things that are said in the film I was watching when I fell asleep. All of these ex boyfriends that came out of the boxes I have either got over or will have to sometime in the future. Getting over some of them wasn’t easy, and I can almost predict that there will be break ups in the future that won’t be pretty. Unfortunately it is just the way we are programmed as humans and I am also a firm believer in that you won’t know how good you have it until you have had it bad.

One of the problems with getting over someone is that it doesn't matter how many different new ‘looks’ you get or shopping sprees you go on, or the amount of bottles of Wine you drink with your best friends. The chances are you will still go to bed every night and find yourself going over every little moment in the relationship, trying to work out what you did wrong. At some point you may even convince yourself that he will come to his senses and turn up at your door or ring you up begging for forgiveness. When you are ready, you will find yourself in a new place, somewhere where the people will make you feel worthwhile and eventually your heart will start to heal, and you will wonder why you ever wasted that much time fixating on every little mistake. The pain will start to fade.


Basically, all of the 1p and 10p boys of this world, who will hurt you and may even break your heart are not what you end up with. I promise you, that you will always get your £250,000 in the end. You may not be able to see him yet, and you may lose out on those smaller amounts, but as soon as you have that final relationship, you will feel so rich, those previous amounts won’t even matter.



Live. Laugh. Love

Life-Nav

 Ever since I passed my driving test, I've got lost many times as well as cried in many car parks because I couldn't find a space that has at least five free either side so I can get in it without crashing. Thankfully, my mum has alway been on hand to get me into or out of spaces, or there has always been a friend that can get out and guide me around a bollard at a McDonald’s drive-thru, so no crashes just yet. Touch wood. I feel very lucky that my mum invested in a Sat-Nav a while ago so whenever I am on my own and unbelievably lost I can just plug the woman in and if she is feeling in a good mood she finds exactly where I am and how I can get home. However, because my mum bought a cheap one, sometimes the woman gets mardy and she coincidentally has an ‘ERROR LOADING MAPS’. Me and my Mum had this problem in Brighton and we think it was because we left her in the glove compartment whilst we went for a Chinese, and so she was getting her own back. I’m sure machines don’t quite have the ability to think things through like that, but you try explaining to the man at Curry’s why, whenever we ignore her and turn left instead of right, she seems to become a little bitchy.

But I was in the shower this morning and I started wondering if we could have a Sat-Nav for our journeys in life. Like, what if we could program in where we wanted to end up and it would take us there, so that we knew we were on the right track? You see, if we had a Life-Nav, we could program in little detours and landmarks we wanted to stop at along the way. That would be amazing, wouldn’t it?

I’m sure I won’t be alone in saying that sometimes I feel a little lost in life, like I’m kind of driving along the motorway looking for a junction that seems appealing, sounds familiar, or seems close to where I want to get to. Do you ever feel like you're driving at what you think is the appropriate pace, yet everyone else is speeding right past you? Or even the other way around; you're driving so fast you're leaving everyone behind? And you find that even when you're driving along at the right speed, someone will come along and cut you up, making your heart race or making you really angry, and then you will spend the next leg of your journey thinking about it, distracting you from the real things you should be concentrating on.

There are people and things in life that are put there as obstacles. Imagine you're driving along at full speed and you were to hit a pothole that you didn’t see coming. It would certainly shake you up, and may even cause some damage to the car that may take time and money to fix. What if that pothole was a boy? Metaphorically speaking. What if you were going so fast in a relationship that you couldn’t see what was coming? What if that pothole you hit symbolised a broken heart? Making you feel stupid for not seeing the signs and the people frantically waving their arms to tell you to slow down, because they saw what was coming before you did.

Junctions in life can sometimes be the trickiest. Do you turn left or right? If you know where you are going, it's fine, but what if you were to get to the junction and have no idea of the direction you were meant to be heading in? Also, what's worse is that there may be cars piling up behind you, pipping and revving their engines causing you to take the wrong direction - people who got so frustrated that you couldn’t make up your mind about what you what you wanted to do in life that they pressured you into something you weren’t completely happy with. What if you know where you want to be going, yet you can’t seem to be able to pull out, and no one is being kind enough to let you out? Well, as my Driving Instructor used to tell me, you sometimes need to push your way out, and be a little Meerkat... (Anyone who had Andy Nightingale, the best driving instructor ever, you will understand what I mean).

Then there are the corners in life, those ones that are so tight that they have to have a sign, saying ‘SLOW’. Picture if that was a corner you were taking in life, a corner that you couldn’t see round, yet you were driving at full pelt around it after ignoring everyone's advice to reduce your speed. How about if you were halfway round that corner and in the middle of the road there was a fallen tree and you didn’t have time to stop? What if you hadn’t been so stubborn and you had listened to everyone's warnings and taken the corner with a little more precaution. You would have been able to stop, and things would of turned out differently.

What about those people on the side of the road? People that will walk into the road unexpectedly, or pedestrian crossings and traffic lights; all things that cause you step on the brakes and stop for a little while. People may even throw things at your car that may smash the windscreen meaning you cannot see the road ahead. Coming across these inconveniences are facts of life, in the literal as well as metaphorical sense. But look on the bright side, you may end up with Gavin from Auto Glass replacing your window. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that!

Then there’s the illnesses you experience. It may only be a blown light bulb, or little scratch on the passenger side, or a dint in the bonnet caused by a trolley in Sainsbury’s. These may be relatively cheap, easy and quick to fix with a visit to the garage. Or a packet of Soothers and a magazine or a Disney princess plaster over your elbow. But what if its something more serious, something caused in a crash or by something somehow becoming unconnected? A broken leg perhaps, or a burst appendix? These take longer to fix, leaving behind visible scars, causing the car or person problems in the future. Maybe like me, even a year of after being in hospital for a month and having many complications with Peritonitis, you are still having to go back to hospital to see specialists and to have an MRI Scan. (I am fine, don’t worry. However I have no idea why I have to have an MRI, the doctor said some big words and then said I needed an MRI, so I just nodded).

However what happens when there is something wrong with the engine, the heart of the car? You see, affairs of the heart cannot always be seen from the exterior. A broken heart takes time to heal, probably more so than an engine. A lot of delicate work needs to be accomplished and sometimes no matter how many people work on fixing that engine, it can take just one person to get it working again, just like with the heart. Many boys may come along and try to fix your heart, but sometimes it takes just one. One person who has that extra skill or steady hand and patience to really understand how you work.

I have always thought that we all go too fast in life. We are so conscious of getting to where we want to be quickly that we forget to take in the view. Sometimes so fast that we manage to get lost. So lost in fact, that we have no idea where we are, and we drive round in circles trying to find a road that seems familiar, or a sign that tells us the direction in which we should be heading. The fact is that by doing this you may eventually find yourself back on the right track, but really you are just making yourself even more lost, and you are wasting time and energy. Eventually you are going to burn out.

There is no shame in pulling over for a while and finding the map out from your boot, or asking a passer by where the hell you are. Sometimes these strangers offer you the best advice, just like an old man I was talking to the other day, they often have experience and wisdom to pass onto you. And if you happen to be as lucky as I was, that old man may just have the ability the reassure your faith in Love.







Live. Laugh. Love

Man Detox

I have decided to have a ‘No Man March’. Wait, I don’t mean I’m going to start a protest against the male existence, although that sounds really appealing right now. No, I mean that I’m going on a bit of detox. A ‘man detox’, if you will. Now, I’ve never been any good at the food kind of detoxes, so I am slightly sceptical about how a month on a man-free diet will go. I feel like I have been on a bit of a binge of bad food lately, and you would be right in thinking that ‘bad food’ loosely translates to ‘bad boys’. 

You see boys are like food. And just like food there are two types; good and bad.

We all know those bad types; the ones that always taste so good, and look really appetizing. Your mouth waters and your heart races as they pull up outside and ring the doorbell, you open the door and there you are faced with the guy who is always there when you ring him saying you want him (although he is usually late). And the best thing is that he has a 13 inch... Pizza. This pizza smells so good and whilst you are eating it, it is amazing. But then once it has finished, then comes the stomach cramps and sick feeling in your stomach. That feeling of regret, and wondering why your ever ate it. But whilst you were eating it you were so happy, even if you were paranoid that anyone else was going to nab a piece whilst your back was turned.
And when you look at the calories on the box you realise why you are left with a terrible taste in your mouth. You start to wonder why you never looked at this before you ordered the pizza and before you started to eat it. Because knowing what you know now, would you ever of picked up the phone? 

The truth is that you never learn from this. The pizza is the same every time, yet you always think it will be different and you won’t be left feeling like your going to vom when your taking the box to the bin.

I don’t no if anyone will understand my food comparisons, but basically, bad boys always seem amazing at first. Whilst you are going through all the excitement, you have no idea how you are going to feel when you realise he has messed you around. You feel like crap, and you need too have a lie down, and sleep it off. 

Then you have your ‘salads’ of this world. Those boys that will make you feel really good about yourself and, at the end of the day, it’s good for you and you feel healthy. The salad makes you feel great, it does everything a food should do for you, and it has no nasty side effects. But as with any healthy food, it’s good for a short time, but after a while you start to feel unfulfilled, and you need something else, something a little more exciting. And that something exciting involves lashings of full fat mayonnaise.

People always say that you need to eat healthy and avoid those cream cakes and chip cobs if possible. Have you realised that people say the exact things about relationships? ‘He’s a bad boy, avoid him’. I don’t no if it’s just me, but I have to experience and see things first hand to believe them, and how will you ever know whether you like a food unless you have tried it? Apart from ‘Salmon’ boys though, those boys are just trying to be something there not, I would never try them.

But then there is another type of food. The good and bad kind, the kind we really enjoy, but don’t get horrible side effects from. The ‘strawberry dipped in chocolate’s of this world are the best. Very tasty, slightly naughty, but yet you get all of the nutrients a fruit gives you. Now I’ve never had one of these before. I mean relationships, I have lost count of how many heavenly strawberries dipped in chocolate I have had, but as far a boy is concerned, zilch.

They always say that you need a balanced diet, a bit of good, and a bit of bad, 5 fruit and vegetables alongside a cheeky Dairy Milk once in a while. Maybe that’s what we need with men too. 

Gwyneth Paltrow (that woman is weird) says that when you have eaten to much bad food for a long period of time, to get it out of your system, you need a detox. So that’s what I’m going to do. You see I was having one of those healthy diets (Good boy) and then I got a bit bored and wanted a huge box of Maltesers (Bad Boy). So I had one. But now the thought of Maltesers repulse’s me (not the actual food kind though. Dear God No!).


If you hadn’t worked it out, ‘Lifeguard boy’ is a Dominoes pizza, so lovely at the time, but you know what, I wish I had never even looked at the menu. But that’s for another blog!


I want a Strawberry Dipped in chocolate, don’t you?







Live. Laugh. Love