Katie Piper: new life, new baby

You meet someone in a bar, you smile, you laugh, you fall in love. It is perfect and effortless, the way things ought to be. Then, one day, you’re walking down the street and, completely out of nowhere, your entire body feels like it’s on fire. You’re not sure what’s going on, exactly, but the feeling is so strange and terrible – so otherworldly, unfamiliar and desperate – that you know it’s bad. You realise you are in serious trouble. In fact, when you wake up, you realise you might die, and that’s just the beginning. There is so much more to overcome.

Many know Katie Piper as the ever-smiling TV presenter and former model. The face of numerous documentaries. Many more will know her as the acid-attack victim and subsequent creator of the Katie Piper Foundation. The woman who courted an over-zealous Facebook fan, without knowledge of his sinister past.

Back in February 2008, Katie was living a normal life with the same common concerns of many people her own age. She was doing well on her path to success in the world of digital media, and thrived on the new challenges she was being given.  In March, all that changed when Katie’s ex-boyfriend Daniel Lynch hired someone to carry out a vicious attack. The guy who threw the sulphuric acid at Katie went by the name of Stefan Sylvestre. Both men, unsurprisingly, are now serving life sentences in jail.

Acid attacks, horribly and surprisingly for some, are actually not that uncommon. The savaging effect of sulphuric acid – which has been used for metal cleaning, the production of explosives and fertilizers, amongst many other things – makes it the perfect weapon…if your goal is to destroy somebody’s facial features, confidence, self-believe and entire soul. And with acid attacks, burns are far from the only concern. Because acid corrodes skin so effectively, it leaves open the possibility of secondary problems: infection, cardiac arrest, multiple organ issues. The list goes on and on, and is compounded by the fact that skin is the largest organ of the human body.

Having followed Katie’s recovery with a reasonable degree of attention over the years – a recovery which has been all but dominated by a string of complex surgeries, including that which was needed to restore her eye-sight – I found myself smiling as I turned my computer on this morning and scanned the news. For today, Katie got the chance to do something she once would have thought impossible: to show her new baby off to the world, with a great big smile on her face. Belle is her name, and she was born on the 14^th March, 2014.

Amongst spiralling concerns about the welfare of the Earth and as-yet unknown technological inventions which look set to make our current social media enterprises look weak by comparison, great things await Belle. Belle will get to grow up and see her mother truly happy, in a world where unthinkable medical progress can now make a real difference to not just physical wellbeing, but emotional wellbeing also. Thanks to the pioneering work of Mr Mohammed Jawad – the leading reconstructive plastic surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, who was instrumental in Katie’s successful recovery – there is now hope for burn victims which simply did not exist before. This is a tremendous thing for any of the approximate 1,500 people who are affected globally every year (statistic courtesy of Acid Survivors Trust International).

All this is something which is particularly poignant right now, just two days after 22-year-old Mary Konye was jailed for 12 years. Naomi Oni, once a friend of Ms Konye, suffered serious burns to her chest and face when Miss Konye decided to throw acid in her face. All because of an alleged comment she made about her friend being ugly.

What’s to come from Katie? I’m looking forward to seeing more. Katie Piper is an inspiration, so, if you have the inclination, feel free to click the above link and see what she’s doing at her foundation.

 

How to write without feeling intimidated by the blank page

Writing is and always will be an intimidating process – there are so many ways to go wrong and so few ways that instantly feel right to an inexperienced mind. Besides this, sitting down to write often requires the engagement of emotions which are not altogether comfortable, but are nothing less than essential in the deployment of all creative endeavours. Additionally, those who express an interest in learning to write face about a hundred enormous obstacles: will I be any good at it? Is there any fucking point? Will anybody actually read my bloody stuff? Is it possible to be a writer and not be poor and jaded forever? This is accompanied by a damaging cultural belief, in many societies, that in the age of the internet, absolutely anyone can be a writer. And if anyone can be a writer, writing must be easy. Writing, in the minds of many, is either a profession for mega-rich authors, journalists or students not yet at peace with their place in life, fumbling through until they no longer have to write any more. Yet the importance of written communication is a dominating force. Surrounded by such complexities and tarnished by the blight of a million terrible Amazon novels, it’s hardly surprising that putting words down can feel so difficult.

Reading this blog post probably won’t change any of that much – although it may illuminate a few things which help reveal ways to cope (a bit like this post from a long time ago on writer’s block).

Consider how incredible the concept of writing is

The controlled transfer of thoughts to paper or screen by way of fingers is a mesmerizing thing when you stop and really think about it. When we write in a way that can be accurately understood, we’re directly connecting our thoughts and feelings with those of everyone around us (or, at least, those who take the time to read them!). This is an incredible act of physical and psychological union – better than mind-reading, in a way, as the thoughts are pure and distilled and a reader doesn’t (usually) have to fight past an endless stream of consciousness to get to the good bits. So, if you’re feeling intimidated, consider that you are engaging in something fantastic and incredibly unique. Talking’s great and all, and painting a picture is a fine way to interact with others and share our thoughts, but writing is the honed and crafted direct observations of human beings. That’s quite something, don’t you think?

You can always write more

I don’t care if you’ve just finished writing your first novel and lost it – well, I do, I feel quite sorry for you, but you get what I mean – or if you’ve just wiped-out that blog post you’ve been working on for a week. You can always write more stuff. The preciousness of thought and time means that most of us get quite attached to our writing, often in an unhealthy way. We struggle to say goodbye to it, even when we know we can do better. Yet saying goodbye to it is exactly what builds stronger foundations. A better ability to cope with change and keep on going, past the constraints of rejection. The fact that you can just begin again a few minutes or hours later means that words are infinitely powerful.

Words are organic and unlimited. Aside from a few nightmarish notions fed to us by disenchanted people and critical self-esteem issues which beg you to do anything else instead, there is nothing stopping your words affecting people in the same way that the so-called great novelists of our time have – words are your chance to tell the world precisely what you think in any way that you desire. If that doesn’t act as an incentive to better one’s ability to communicate via the medium of words, I don’t know what does.

What you have written has been written before, but so what?

I often hear the argument – the bad argument, the terrible, meaningless argument – that writing has been done so well so many times before that there is no point pursuing it as an activity or occupation. It simply is not true. It doesn’t matter in the least. There will nearly always be someone out there who you know who is better than you, or more capable. It’s irrelevant. That a million people have attempted and failed to finish their novels does not mean that you will suffer the same fate. Even though the outcome for a new writer may be statistically likely to be similar, where writing is concerned, statistics are only worth the value we give them.

Know that the act of writing will bring about joy and self-growth, no matter what its end result

Contrary to popular misconception, the important thing about writing is not solely the act of committing words to paper or screen. The other very important thing is enjoying doing it. Out of all the times I have written blogs, articles or novels, I can only truly recall a couple of times where I in no way benefited from the process. Writing brings enormous entertainment, stimulation, inspiration and enjoyment. It’s a proven thing that those experiencing the flow state of writing are at one with themselves and, while being alone, are anything but lonely.

Unsure of what to write?

This is a subject I have covered extensively in a past blog. My best advice to those who are trying to write and feeling consistently daunted by it is…try and think about what you really want to say. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, it could be very small. It could be a seemingly inconsequential observation that leads to bigger, pivotal things. In writing, small things grow into big things with very little encouragement. The great thing is that it happens automatically, you just need to commit some time.

Failing that, consider what you don’t want to say. Writing does not always have to follow strict rules and regulations. If you’re completely unable to write anything at all, then why not ask yourself the question of why this is the case. Why not try to formulate this feeling of frustration into meaningful words?

Stop listening to others who say they find writing easy

Again, this truly is irrelevant to you. How does it matter how well someone else does something? Who cares if they’ve only been writing seriously for a year and have written their first novel draft, beginning to end, one-hundred-thousand words? It simply does not matter in any way to you and what you’re doing, and it never will. And again, be careful not to run away with yourself. Writing is a learned craft which cannot be rushed.

I remember when I first started to write about 10 years ago. Writing came very naturally to me, because I didn’t know what I was doing and it felt exciting to write without restriction. So accept that writers go through stages. Important stages that cannot be missed or circumnavigated. Those at the very beginning may find writing almost effortless, as they are naïve and lack the constraints presented by rules. Those who are well-practiced in the art may write in what appears to be a reasonably effortless way, owing to their growing knowledge-base and many hours of practice. If you’re somewhere in the middle, however, and a blank page is intimidating you, there is a possibility that this is all part of a very important process that must be endured and worked through. So try to relax and have fun when writing. If you can only do one thing, write stuff that makes you really smile.

Do you have any advice for fellow writers, or those who would like to begin writing but don’t know where to start? Feel free to leave a comment below, like it or share it on Facebook/Twitter. Let’s see what we can get together and learn.

 

 

How watching dogs interacting with sticks will substantially improve your life

Witness the wonder

Yesterday I saw a dog in a park carrying a stick – I think it was a Border Collie. Or attempting to carry a stick. The stick was as long as the dog was – assuming the mind-set of a dog for a moment, my guess is that this was probably the main attraction – and the dog was an old boy with a big shaggy coat. As soon as I saw him slowly approach the stick with his curious eyes and lovely colouring, I was confident that he was going to be enamoured by everything it had to offer. Another possible attraction of the stick may well have been its multi-faceted appearance. With an appealing smooth-yet-intriguing texture on the teeth and additional smaller sticks literally branching off from the main one, this particular nice stick, stranded in the greenery of the park and just begging to be picked-up, clearly had a lot to offer. Additionally, the stick was the only discernible object in the entire grassy field, which, surely, qualified as reason enough alone.

Here is how watching dogs interacting with sticks will substantially improve your life.

Mental wellbeing

As I believe I have just sufficiently demonstrated, watching dogs – young or old, age irrelevant – interact with sticks is a joyous activity for humans of all ages and dispositions. Some dogs simply carry sticks about, making humans smile almost by default (unless those humans are cold and dead inside like people who find no pleasure at all in films like Dirty Dancing, but we won’t bother ourselves with that here). Whatever a dog is doing with a stick, be it simply carrying it or trying to attack it, watching such activity makes for immense enjoyment and pleasure.

Physical wellbeing

Facial muscles require a regular workout. Don’t ask me why – let us simply assume that it’s better to smile than to not, and that all those freelance writers who have written copious web articles on the subject over the years had a real interest and were not just following the incredible trail of money which writing for a living so obviously brings.

Here comes the science part. Smiling induces movement in other parts of the body. Hence the fact that when you smile, you generally tend to be interacting in some way which also works other parts of the body, thus making you fitter in a subconscious, holy-shit-I’ve-just-lost-2-pounds-and-all-I-did-was-watch-a-dog-playing way. It is therefore possible to say that watching dogs messing about with sticks is physically good for you, even if you find absolutely no mental stimulation in such an activity and still resent me quite a bit for mentioning Dirty Dancing in the above paragraph.

Laughter is great

Scientists reckon that laughter can be used as an effective pain medicine. Wow. psychologists believe, and have strong evidence for, the notion that laughter helps people to bond and engage in meaningful relationships with one another. No way! Another direct consequence of laughter is the inevitable release of endorphins, which we all quite love. So watching dogs interacting with sticks is beneficial in a breathtaking number of ways. Not to mention the fact that watching dogs carrying and playing with sticks does other things besides…

It gets the brain working

Watch a dog obsessing over a stick and you can’t help but think. Try it out and see what I mean. Take this example, in the mind of a woman whose a bit fed-up with her husband: look at what she’s doing with that stick! That’s ingenious, dogs are clever, I wish Dave was more ingenious…which reminds me…he really needs to Google how to fix the cupboard door like he bloody told me he would…maybe I should consider divorce after all…

While it could well be said that dogs carrying sticks is, in evolutionary terms, creating a disenchanting culture of misery for couples – specifically those with DIY shortcomings which could have been avoided had one followed gut instinct when a light-bulb needed changing and the partner in question was seriously flummoxed in a way that should really have made one think long and hard about the future of that relationship – it could also be said that it makes you think and have ideas. And if you have ideas, that’s brilliant, isn’t it?

All because dogs just quite like carrying sticks around. There. Thank you, dogs, and thank you for being there, sticks.

Endless fascination: Foo Fighters’ Everlong

I didn’t begin to appreciate Foo Fighters‘ music until well after I’d left secondary school. A shame, because had I got there earlier, I would probably have been better able to relate to my class-mates. A select group of my peers were raving about this Foo Fighters band, treating angry Dave and his muckers like the originators of some kind of actual religion. Needless to say, this was something which provoked the attention of a sadistic RE-studies-despising-boy who went by the name of Big Terry (or Infamous Big Terry, depending on which people you hung about with). As was the fashion back in the early 1990s, Big Terry quite liked getting weaker pupils in horrendous looking head-locks, and he didn’t much appreciate groundbreaking rock music, either.

There was a boy in my form who had big ears and wouldn’t stop going on about Foo Fighters. A boy who, luckily for him, could also run fairly fast. Possibly the owner of the largest surface-area ears in our entire year, this immensely obvious physical characteristic went largely unnoticed to his class-mates as long as he was talking about Foo Fighters and successfully appearing cool. No wonder, then, that he kept up his adoration of Dave’s gang with punishing force – providing Big Terry was busy terrorising another victim, that is.

Everlong was one of those songs which instantly arrested my senses. There was no transition, no needing to get acquainted or even interpret the lyrics – the connection resonated instantly. Just like Pixies‘ Bone Machine would do, and just as Jeff Buckley’s mesmerizing song Grace would so effortlessly achieve, listening to Everlong was an experience akin to what could only be described as setting foot on another planet. At the time, I had heard nothing like it, nothing that even came remotely close. While other songs would come and go over the years, losing their significance and some of their magic, for me, Everlong still to this day retains the same powerful intensity.

The key to Everlong‘s astounding, multi-layered feel is, I think, an ability to completely consume a person’s senses. Grohl’s lyrics are raw and rampaging, while the song’s construction is a sprawling mass of high-energy which will have you receiving a speeding-ticket in next to no time. Everlong is a song to go crazy to, one to sing at the top of your voice or quietly embrace through ear-phones, isolated from the outside world.

When I first heard Everlong, I listened to it repeatedly. I listened to it for months, every single day, until the CD wore out. Each time seemed to bring something new and as yet unnoticed – yet so massively engaging that I struggled to comprehend how I had not acknowledged its significance before. Yet over time, I realised that something was happening. Everlong wasn’t losing its appeal, as such, but I was beginning to realise that, like very few songs, it was a song to cherish.

Nowadays, I tend not to listen to Everlong very often. If I hear it more than three times in 6 months then for me, that could be considered an exception. If I hear it in a cafe, I will, almost subconsciously, do everything in my power to put space between me and it – while also feeling cheated that I am doing so. If it comes on while I am driving, or accidentally finds itself pouring out of my MP3 player, I will shut it off without a second thought…unless I am truly in the precise right mood. For me, Everlong is a very special song which I like to listen to only from time to time. To savour and enjoy when I need that extra-special something (so much so that I didn’t even listen to it while writing this blog post).

While it’s possible that I will one day get fed-up with this classic song, something tells me that if that is to happen, it won’t be for some time yet.

Channel 4: Live From Space, just for the hell of it

My girlfriend and I ended up watching the first of Channel 4s Live From Space series by total accident. Jen, fuelled by enthusiasm to see first dates flourish and fail miserably, was absolutely certain that everyone’s favourite new dating show First Dates was on Channel 4 at 9pm last night. It wasn’t of course. We were an hour too early. As it was then announced that, instead, the first episode from this new Space series was to begin, both of us sat there a bit pissed off and deflated and wondering what to do next. We had good reason to be annoyed, it’s true. I had my treats ready (one of which was a big fat bar of Dairy Milk) and Jen had her pack of blueberries at the ready (a real bargain at just 34 pence on special offer from our favourite supermarket, The Cooperative). In a very short period of time, we had to decide: do we watch this Live From Space thing or not bother? After a bit of debate, I decided to make an executive decision. We were going to give the show a chance. Probably it was going to be crap, we both thought, but whatever way you looked at it, it would at least be intriguing to see how people do poos safely in space.

But you know how it goes. No sooner had Dermot O’Leary appeared on screen than my phone went off in my pocket. I was tempted to not answer it, as Dermot had just started to speak – there he was, standing in front of Mission Control in Houston, looking happy to be doing something other than X-Factor – but it was our friend’s birthday and we had tried to call him a few minutes before (which, when he failed to pick up, saw Jen and I singing Happy Birthday onto voicemail like a right couple of silly goons). Selfishly, I had thought at the time that the amount of effort we had put into singing that famous song would somehow blow the mind of our friend enough that he would need at least an hour to take in the wonder of it all, thus giving us just enough time to first watch Live From Space episode 1. So as to concentrate fully on the chat with our friend, I turned the channel over. That was when I knew that I was more interested in learning about Space than I had first thought.

I tell you what, I loved learning about Space with Dermot. I really thought it was brilliant. Although it was at no point in time mentioned how astronauts safely do a poo in Space, we did learn plenty of other interesting things. For example, anyone who has often thought What the hell do people actually do in Space? would have been delighted to discover that, mainly, astronauts do bizarre experiments which are recorded in every way imaginable, apparently for the sake of it. Us viewing public witnessed this first-hand as ants were released inside a small container, live from Space. It sounds dull, I’ll admit, but watching the ants attempt to go about their business was strangely mesmerizing. It’s just a shame the ants can’t speak for themselves.

Another high point came when one of the astronauts shared with us a routine daily task that most of us with decent running non-diseased water take for granted: that loveable daily event of washing one’s own face. As Koichi Wakata explained how good it felt to put a warm towel upon his face, I turned to Jen, initially unimpressed and said, “I didn’t start watching this to see astronauts wash their faces!” My initial opinion soon proved to be hasty and wrong, however, as we learned that astronauts don’t have showers or use running water in Space. Knowing this, what we had just witnessed took on a whole new dimension of importance.

As the show went on, my imagination couldn’t help but go into over-drive. I just kept thinking: what experiments would I do if I was spending six months hanging about in Space? I decided these would take priority:

1: technically it’s not an experiment, but it is exciting. I’d go on a bit of a rogue Spacewalk. One day, when everyone else was asleep in their quarters, I’d wake up and go out into Space on my own, like a renegade! Probably I’d try and walk to a star or something daring like that. Forever, scientists and know-it-all people have said without question that stars are light years away from each other, but what if they’re not? What if there really is one just a couple of miles away and we’ve been lied to all along? You’d feel utterly foolish for not trying, wouldn’t you? It would be a great thing to say when you got back from Space, that’s for sure: “it’s not true that stars are light years away from each other. I came across one on a rogue Spacewalk. Beat that.”

I did have a load more ideas – doing falconry in Space, or maybe tricking the other astronauts into thinking that a secret astronaut existed on the Space Station who was hiding away somewhere and hell-bent on sabotaging the mission, etc – but I have decided to not go into detail about these here. On second thoughts, it seems very cruel on birds of prey and possibly a waste, quite literally, of Space.

There is more to be said, so I’ll get on with that.

Do you ever wonder about TV in the future? I do. As a result, I predict – and this is a very serious prediction with absolutely no humour – that the future will see millions of us tuning-in to an X-Factor style TV show where contestants are beamed-up to the ISS for incredible galactic singing competitions. It sounds crazy, but I’ve decided it’s extremely likely (the adverts would probably mention the phrase intergalactic fun at some point, but to me that seems a bit inaccurate, seeing as in Space terms the ISS is barely out of the Earth’s atmosphere. But maybe that’s just me being a bit anal, I don’t know).

There were so many things which amazed me as we watched the programme elapse. One thing which freaked us out all the way through was how the astronauts looked when floating about. They didn’t look normal at all! Instead of stomachs being where they ought to be, they appeared to have floated upwards by several feet. People’s shoulders, for example, were up by their ears, and I’m sure I saw an arse round where their shoulder blades used to be. Everything appeared to have floated upwards. This observation quickly grew into a rapid, escalating fear for the safety and location of the men’s genitals. I just kept imagining myself in Space, going to the toilet, and looking about for my genitals, only to discover them where my nipples used to be, swaying around upon my back.

Then there was the whole thing about what these so-called experiments were really for. Considering the United States’ love for experimenting in secret locations on Earth without telling anyone until caught absolutely red-handed, I struggle to believe that Mission Control are experimenting in purely innocent ways. And let’s face it, if there are places on Earth where rules can be completely ignored, Space is going to be a million times better. I’m not sure I want to know what other experiments they are doing in Space and not telling us about. Then again, I’ve banged on quite a bit about it here, so maybe I am lying. Perhaps I do.

The Spacewalk that Rick and Mike Hopkins had to do was fantastic viewing, though. Widely considered to be the most dangerous thing you can do, this one was to see Rick and Mike Hopkins (they’re not brothers, by the way, I just haven’t bothered to research Rick’s second name) go out to replace a valve on a coolant pump. For me, being asked to do something like this is my absolute worst nightmare, so it’s a good job that you can’t be called to go up into Space like you can be requested to partake in Jury Duty (as of yet, anyway). I bet I’d break something which would inadvertently cause the death of a fellow astronaut. I just know I would. I consider myself to be a good person, but still, I am in no doubt that this would probably result in me going back inside the ISS only to say “guys, Jason sort of fucked up the valve and died…the idiot. I did everything I could but it was too late. I told you you shouldn’t have trusted me too – I did make a very big point of saying that changing valves is not my forte, and you still bloody sent me out there.” I’d love to tell the truth in this situation, but what might happen then? It could be bad. Spending 6 months in Space with just a load of other men must do funny things to you. For mental wellbeing it cannot be great.

Which reminds me…how come we didn’t see any women on board the ISS? Could that be mere coincidence, or is that by design? The more I pondered this question, the more confused I got. In an age of (supposed relative) equality, surely women are just as capable as men when it comes to Space stuff? I concluded in the end that probably it was – is – by design and for safety. While I’m fairly confident that most men would be able to work with a woman in Space for months on end and not violate them in some way, I suppose there is no way of knowing how people will react once they get out there (a bit of research at this link has led to something of an explanation which is worth reading, and which also shows my naivety and lack of knowledge up in quite a dazzling way. It would appear that tradition plays a large part: astronauts were originally fighter-jet pilots, and since the military didn’t used to allow for the consideration of female fighter-jet pilots, the resulting lack of female astronauts – combined with a lack of wanting on the US Government’s part to adapt or change their selection criteria – was the inevitable tragic and downright hideously unfair result).

So there you have it: Space is so much more than just the worst place to get lost (unless you want to get really lost, in which case you couldn’t have been more fortunate). It’s not a place for lazy people, however. Did you know that in Space it’s mandatory to do a couple of hours of intense exercise every single day? You could float about all day in awe of Zero-G and do absolutely nothing but smile, but when your wife asked you to go shopping or even stand up for several seconds when you got back home, you’d wish you hadn’t, because your bones would probably break. A smile wouldn’t be much good then, obviously.

Much as I enjoyed the show, I have decided that I have no ambitions to go to Space any time soon. None whatsoever. Once I’ve finally seen Gravity, I have a feeling that the inclination might be even less, but still, I am willing to remain open-minded.