Stop the Clock: on springing and falling backwards and forwards

Go on, admit it, how many of you read that title as Stop the Cock? Just me? I mean I know I wrote it... 

Every Spring we are cheerily reminded that the clocks 'spring forward' for the next six months until the doom-sayers will pipe up and remind us the clocks must "fall back". 
We spring forward into longer days and sunshine (in between those April showers) but fall right back into cold, dark, wet and, disappointingly, snow free nights before we have even used up the last of our suntan lotion. WHERE was our bloody summer? 
But it's all about perspective isn't it? Marian Keyes has a campaign on Twitter #peopleaginspring, which bemoans the longer days and the warmth of the sun: the movement represents those of the World, yes, those who are wrong, who prefer winter. Perhaps in Marian's World the clocks would fall forward into winter and spring back to summer because the blasted summer always has to pull us out of comforting, cosy winter and force our pasty skin into the light. Personally, I prefer Spring and Autumn, both have the promise of change and a mixture of weather, which is much how life feels every day.


Perspective is always important but never more so than when you feel you are taking a backwards step. In fact, in life there are no backwards steps, we cannot physically go back in time, we also cannot fast forward time, we are always, undeniably, right here, right now. 
And so, when I made the decision to go 'back' on anti depressants this week, I chose to imagine I am springing back on them to prevent myself from falling forwards into that crevice I'm wobbling atop. I haven't fallen back on them like some accident. I've made an active, conscious decision (with the help of my Mother) to do something whilst I am able to, so that I don't find myself in danger at the bottom of a well without even the energy to muster the voice needed to cry for someone to help pull me up. Which is what depression, at it's worst, can feel like for me. 


I'm okay, I'm not worried about me and neither should you be. In that magic way that an iPhone can change time zones whilst you're sitting unknowing in an aeroplane, or jump from winter to summertime as you sleep, life can sometimes trigger an algorithm in my brain that sets off a way of thinking that confuses the rest of my programming. And when that happens, it's good to fix the problem before the bug spreads or a bloody hacker gets in. Jesus, when did I get so tech savvy? Literally one month ago I didn't even know how the trackpad on my Macbook worked, despite owning it for eight months already, and now I'm all computer programming whiz-kid. I've changed. 
And I have changed because whenever I have a little glitch in my computer system I learn a little bit more about how the rest of me works. So, even as I feel my mood changing and try to sidle out of my Mothers concerned gaze, I can recognise when it's time to redesign the website, or at least reboot it to prevent a serious server crash; or something less geeky. Which is why it was with a spring in my step that I took the first tablet yesterday, a tablet that I know will lead to longer and sunnier days, just like the changing clock already has (okay, sunshine isn't guaranteed). 

The seasons will change and with them the weather, so we might as well accept that fact and maybe check the weather forecast every once in a while, so we can try to wear weather appropriate clothes; where fashion will allow, of course.

Maybe pop an umbrella in your bag; this is England, after all. You might not always need that umbrella but if you’re caught in a storm there is no way to walk around it, you have to walk straight through, and you might as well do whatever you can to make that walk a little less, well, wet, but also less difficult.

Summer is coming but you’ll probably still need that umbrella.

When happiness is in fashion (fleetingly)

Even Jared Leto would tap that double denim delight 

This recent 90's revival is doing funny things to me, first I left my house in full blown double denim and felt smug about it, then I found myself seeking out No doubt songs, or Nsync until eventually I had an entire night going through a back catalogue of all the stuff I used to listen to when I still day dreamed about my school crush Steven Huggins or Mark Owen, who some said Steven looked like. Sighs. Guys, I was singing along to Emotions by Mariah Carey. Well, I say 'singing'...who can actually 'sing' along to that song? 

Look Millennials and all the potential men I am likely to date (you gotta look down when you hit your 30's and discover everyone your own age is married), this post just isn't for you, you're not going to understand a word I say from this point in and I won't throw in a single Harry Potter quote #TEAMROALDDAHL. So you might as well just go and invent an app that matches denim with other denim shades whilst the adults have a little trip down memory lane. Off you go now, scoot. 

Whilst staring at the almost full moon, I listened to, in no particular order, No Doubt, Nsync, Backstreet Boys, All 4 One (I swear - obvs), Boyz II Men, Take That (old school, 90's style), Mariah Carey and Jewel. And do you know what? I was happy. 

I was happy the way I used to be back in 1995 when Steven Huggins would come and talk to me at lunchtime. Advice to any teenagers still reading (seriously there won't be a single Potter quote, not one), if you are to have a school crush make him be three years older so that you can't actually date him (if he dates you, judge him, judge him harshly, you are too young) and make sure he is the kind of crush who will go out of his way to talk to you because he knows you have a crush on him. The kind of guy who enjoys the flattery of your crush and will indulge it but never, ever act on it. This is the perfect kind. It means you have so much material for the letters you will pass under the desk to your best friend during French. Guys if you're still doing French at school, don't bother, if you ever go to France they will pretend not to understand your perfectly acceptable attempt at their language and talk to you in English anyway - so fuck them and their pretty sounding words, send notes to your friends instead. 

Send notes about whomever you are crushing on, then go home and listen to, I guess One Direction(?) or Taylor Swift whilst flip-flopping between daydreams of said crush or marriage to Harry or Liam or whatever the other ones are called and be happy. Be really, really happy. 

Because the next time you get to be that happy again is basically when the decade in which you were a teenager comes back to haunt you when you're way past your best and no where close to the day dream version of yourself of yore. In fact your future husband, Mark Owen, is now in the real future and not married to you, thank God because he looks like someone’s old Aunt Mildred, all Paul McCartney loose jowls and sex-addict apologetic for sleeping with every moving female that got within arm distance of him (which is close because he is tiny). 

They all turn out this way, boy band crushes, school crushes, the people you were convinced were definitely going to be the love of your life and would cry buckets over because LIFE IS SO UNFAIR WHY IS HE GOING OUT WITH LISA CHALKLEY? Because she is his age and stunning - shut up Hannah. You'll feel differently when he breaks her heart in a few years time...just you wait. 

With the exception of Jared Leto, your crush only has one trajectory; down. He'll get fat, spotty and greasy, or Aunt Mildred-y like Mark Owen and he'll either go on to be a drug addicted waster with ten kids by different Mum's or a sex-addicted alcoholic or worse, like actual Paul McCartney, a jowly vegetarian. Never trust a vegetarian. Don't even talk to Vegans. Jason Orange I am looking right at you. 

Can you imagine how Cameron Diaz feels now? She dumped Jared Leto, dumped him. And not only has he been preserved in some kind of special vegan diet (it's okay to talk to Vegans when they are Jared Leto) but even though the 90's ended and took his TV show with it, all the things you might expect to have happened to Jordan Catalano in My So Called Life didn't, he just simply put the 90's in his pocket and kept walking until the only part of the 90's that still existed was Jared Leto, and now, now the 90's are back and there he is, all perfect hair and face, a cool as fuck rockstar who eats healthy and smiles. Jesus. Poor Cameron, she married one of Good Charlotte who even in this new 90's revival still aren't cool and whilst her ex has won an Oscar, the closest she’s ever come to an Oscar is sleeping with Oscar winning Jared Leto before he was Oscar winning. It’s enough to make me want to cry for her, thinking about Cameron has almost knocked me off my 90’s-when-Britney-had-the-best-abs-in-the-World high. Which, whilst we're on the subject, are BACK. Yep, go on Instagram, even Britney's abs have come back to celebrate the 90's revival. 

Back in the early 00's my sister, my nemesis, Steven Huggins real life ex-girlfriend Lisa, and me were invited back to Jared Leto's hotel by Jared Leto's no-where-near-as-cool brother Shannon: we said no. WE SAID NO. So, Cameron, we get it...damn, we get it. 

But she was right, of course, she acted on instinct, everything was screaming at her that he would become a Paul McCartney; of course, he had to. In the future, science will carry out tests on single pieces of Jared Leto's hair to work out how he managed to be so perfect regardless of decade, age and veganism. 

He is a miracle; I would put money on it that your crush won't be. Although...maybe Harry, I mean, it's the hair, the hair is a big sell, like Jordan Catalano before him, he could be a candidate for staying exactly the same regardless of decade. Time will tell, invest wisely teen crushees, forget Zayn; he'll be in rehab in five years max. 

I mean, I digress, but who wouldn't at the mere mention of Jared Leto? I mean, please. All these memories and the music and the Jessie from Saved by the Bell Mum jeans and denim shirt style that I have been rocking has got me all happy. Happy the way we can only be when we are teenagers. Yes, I do mean happy in a way that is permanently miserable and or angry. But that was happy. That was blissfully happy, the worst thing that happened is the school dick head picked on you for being ginger and I can tell any of you suffering this now (I’m really not going to quote Potter, why are you still reading?), that guy will be dead at 23 from a drug overdose, or jobless and fat, or who even cares, he'll be nowhere you want to be so forget him. Look, Ed Sheeran got rejected by music industry school bullies who thought he was supposed to be prettier and that man is getting laid as many times a week as he damn well wants. So whatever sadness you feel about the crush who you can't have, or the fact that Harry Styles isn't single (don't panic - he probably is or if he isn't he will be and then he'll be a sex pest like Mark Owen and you won't care for him anymore), forget it all because this is as happy as you will ever be. 

Later when happiness visits it will be so damn fleeting and unstable and full of other considerations that you will look back at your school years with longing. And then, bonus, they'll be in fashion and you'll find yourself crying with happiness for all the memories and the fact you didn't ever give up hope that double denim would be back. But then, as soon as it comes back, it will go again and the only constant certainty you will ever know is that no matter what decade and what age, Jared Leto will always be cool. 

Surviving Twenty (also known as life)

I had to scroll a long way down on Facebook to find my 20's #sadfaceemoticon

This week the Guardian have been doing a series called "How I survived my 20's" in which they have asked other writers to write about their experience of being in their 20's. Which seems as good a place as any to start this weeks blog post that I should have posted at lunchtime but started writing at 2pm.

Late, that is probably the theme of my 20's, late and following a path already trodden. My 20's were book-ended by two breakdowns. The first was reactionary to a whole plethora of shit events and toiled up with teenage angst and a lot of anger. The kind of anger you can only feel when you've got youth on your side. In fact, I am jealous of 20 year old, angry and depressed Hannah. Rage like that can only come when the most you have to worry about is that NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME. No they don't Hannah because they are too busy trying to understand themselves and pay the bills, put food on the table, navigate heartbreak, house sales, deaths, births, horrible bosses, unemployment, naughty children etc. 


What a luxury it is to be 20, although this is quickly followed by the realisation that in the words of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone "This is it, don't get scared now." You are from here on in, forever, until sweet death comes and takes you, on your own and like Macaulay himself tried to warn you, it might start out as fun and exciting to be FREEEEEEEEEE! But soon, before you know it, you'll be protecting your house from burglars (landlords) and wishing your parents would just come back now (pay your rent). Literally, who knew that Home Alone was a metaphor for growing up? Who knew? John Hughes you fecking genius you: next week we look at why Uncle Buck is really a lesson in why you should always just be the Uncle, not the parent.


As your 20's draw to a close and you realise that yes, you've drank a lot and had a lot of 5am-might-as-well-go-straight-to-work-from-the-club days, you've met some brilliant people, you've lost some brilliant people and you actually looked way better than you realised the whole bloody time, you probably should have worn hot pants every day; you're still not entirely sure 'who' you are, 'why' you are or 'how' you are. So you just go ahead and have another break down, but this time that lovely sweet rage is replaced with endless tears, blank stares and a crippling lethargy similar to that you felt when you had Glandular Fever, which SPOILER ALERT, is not actually caused by kissing. I got my little bout of Glandular fun just from living in the same house as a blonde northerner. Other things I got from living in the same house as a blonde northerner was a love for Cliff Richard calendars, red wine, cheese and swearing. 


Before you know it you wake up with a hangover on your 29th birthday, single (again), still temping as a receptionist whilst pulling pints four nights a week, still not a Hollywood star / writer / events manager / peace keeping envoy / insert whatever achievement you haven't yet reached and that all that fun hasn't actually got you much further than where you started. But fucking hell it was fun wasn't it? But still, eggs are drying up (watch Uncle Buck - you don't need kids, just niece and nephews), exes are getting married or starting their own companies which they go on to sell for literally hundreds of pounds so they can be a fucking politician (some of that is true) or just walking away from you to go and be the same as they were before you, because that is a better prospect than being the same as they were with you. 


This is the moment where the twinkly music comes in and your Mum comes through the front door shouting "Kevin! Kevin!" just in time for Christmas day. Except, it isn't. It's the moment you stare 30 in the face and you cry like a baby because you know you need to get all this "WHY ME, WHY ALWAYS ME?" out before the real work that is your 30's begins. You can already sense that over that decade pay wall is the career you always wanted and a life you haven't been imaginative enough to envisage in your 20's because you were too busy doing shots and going to uni and following everyone else's path but your own. This is your moment; so have a break down and then bloody well get on with it.


Oh and stop being late.  


But seriously though, can I have an extension on my deadline because my cat just ate my homework...


WHY ME? WHY ALWAYS ME?