'Inside Out'

When I started this blog, I didn't know how I felt about wanting to do book reviews or movie reviews but after watching one of Disney's latest masterpieces, Inside Out, I have been itching to talk about it to anyone and everyone that will listen. So on the contrary to a previous post I wrote about how Old Disney was so much better (I still stick by that), Disney Pixar seems to have outdone themselves once more. Maybe it's because it was my first time watching the movie and not enough people have watched it yet to class it as being overrated that made it so special for me. It might also have to do with the fact that there were no major songs in the movie that distracted from the plot that intrigued me. 

So aside from the fact that Inside Out animators and creators already had a major leg up above Nina and the Neurons (a British show for kids on Cbeebies that I'm not even sure they air anymore), the opening scene in the movie with 'Joy' could not have been done more beautifully. 

Every aspect and concept of the movie was so well thought so and so colourful and vivid, it genuinely made me wonder about what on Earth goes up in our brains. Without giving much away, the movie entails the idea that our brain contains a HQ (central nervous system if you must for all the biologist freaks out there) and it's controlled by 5 emotions, Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger, who on a day to day basis drive everything in us from our first laugh to the sass we give our parents. The very thought that's gone into figuring out how the emotions would look like on screen and uplifting things like our long term memory store and subconscious is so well done in the film. It's a perfect coming of age film that has in no way gone out of its way to be 'extra' per say. It flowed so eloquently and I wouldn't mind watching it again and again. 

Though some concepts might be ahead of the kids who this movie is aimed for, it most definitely has the scope for an even better sequel. 

One of my favourite parts in particular had to be the imaginary boyfriend in Riley's (the main character) imagination who looked a little too much like Harry Styles for my liking. What with the messy brown side swept curly hair, the skinny jeans, the brown boots and the good looks, I couldn't help but wonder what my brain would look like according to Inside Out animators. 

Aspects of personality development and friendship and family bonds as well as dreams and nightmares and our 'train of thought' and 'brain freezes' in the literal sense were all touched upon and I've just been so overwhelmed by this film, I can't stop playing the scenes in my head. It even touched upon those God damn annoying tunes that get stuck in our head for days on end and how we forget so many memories from when we we're babies. If anything, you should watch this movie for the light psychology knowledge without the textbooks and case studies. It's genius.

Unlike most Disney movies which are very keen to stress the importance of imagination, Inside Out suggests that leaving your imagination behind is a sign of growing up. I'm not entirely sure about that part in the film but I guess it's a way of authenticating as well as telling children that life isn't over if your thoughts about fairy princesses and rainbow unicorns are lost.

I laughed and cried watching this movie and I don't for once think it's a movie only for children. If you were unsure about this movie, you need to stop whatever you're doing and go and watch it. It's truly and completely worth it. 

Road-tripping part 2

So after spending the afternoon and evening at Stratford, we headed off to Bristol where we stayed the night at some sort of distant relative's apartment. I'm not sure how I'm related to her, I mean. You know how it is when you're travelling? You meet family you never know you had. Mind you, the car journey this time was seemingly much more relaxed. My sister and I had finally worked out the best way to divide the space between us and sit ourselves in a way that we were both comfortable (after I pushed her feet off her lap enough times for her to understand it wasn't acceptable). Long car journeys are in no way easy on one's arse either. I also found that out the hard way. Seriously, to anyone embarking on a long car journey, whatever you do, do not forget some form of cushioning. Car windows are also not a good place to rest your head to sleep against.
Back to the trip, according to my plan, we were supposed to head to London the next morning but given that the weather was so so beautifully disgusting, we decided a change to our trip was in order. Shit happens, people. Sometimes, you're starved off your dream of the cringy London tour for the trillionth time because the weather decides to be your enemy.
Regardless, we decided to spend the day in Bristol, knowing the rain would stop eventually. And so I switched to my list of things to do in Bristol instead - yes, I had lists for every prospective city we were going to.
First on my list for Bristol was Clevedon Pier. If you must know, it's been a dream place of mine to go to because One Direction may or may not have filmed the music video for their song You and I.

Clevedon Pier was a 30 minute drive from my cousin's apartment we were staying in. The minute we got near the pier, the air was already 50 times clearer and freezing as hell. None of that matter though because the view just at first glance was so breathtaking. The water just seemed to go on forever and one look at the pier and I began squealing like a two year old. The entry fee to go onto the pier was surprisingly very cheap too. The day was already looking up you see. I was already practically jumping on the spot while my dad paid for us to get on the pier and so he let slip to the lady at the till that I was a One Direction fan. She laughed and told me about the plaque the boys had on the pier - it's worth noting that she was incredibly friendly too. I thanked her and left my family behind and literally ran past the scaffolding (they were making an extended tourist information bit at the front) to the pier.

So the pier is pretty long. Like it's huge. When you first step on it, you don't notice but the minute you look down at your feet and realise there's nothing under the huge planks of wood but water, it shakes you a little. Also, walking in a straight line along the pier proved to be more difficult than I thought it would. I kept thinking I'd trip over but it was all good. There weren't a lot of people up and down the pier and the few people that were there were only fishing.

Every time I looked up, the sky was truly surreal.
The wind however, I could live without. My hair was all over the place and the wind didn't even wait long enough between each blow for me to fix it. The next time I go, I most certainly will remember to tie my hair back super tight. Nonetheless, I wouldn't exchange the feeling I had walking up and down the pier for anything. Especially when my sister and I did the whole trek and were unsuccessful in being about to locate the One Direction plaque. I was disappointed to say the least seeing as they were the reason I went there. Some of the other plaques people had put on were so cute, they almost brought tears to my eyes. There were cute ones and goofy ones and heartbreaking ones.
I never did get around to asking the lady at the entrance how much it was to have a plaque put on the pier but I imagine the size and the number of letters you put on definitely mattered.

You could tell which ones were new because they were still gold and shiny whereas the older ones looked a little too vintage to be even classed as being from this century.
So back to my bizarre account of the day, eventually, after rushing back to the lady at the entrance and having her show me where the plaque for One Direction was, I managed to locate it.

Their plaque looked a little too dirty for my liking but then I realised I probably wasn't the first strange person to have driven all the way to Clevedon from Manchester just to take a picture of that pier and that there were many before me who'd done just the same.
After taking one last look back at the pier, we left Clevedon and headed to a place called Weston-super-mare. Considering the fact that I haven't been to a beach since I was like 3, Weston-super-mare was a pretty big deal for me. It'd been raining earlier in the day like I'd mentioned but by the time we got there, the sky was clear and pretty sunny. We walked along the beach (ran more like) and did the usual writing our names in the sand, screaming at the sea pointlessly and constantly looking out for the seagulls flying over our heads in fear of them doing what they do best.

We had lunch at McDonald's after that and finally headed off towards London but only to spend the night there.
Believe it or not, I managed to get halfway through that book I'd dreaded having to read just the day before because I realised I had a fabulous day and winding down with a book is exactly what I needed.
Our trip didn't go exactly the way we planned it but I wouldn't have asked for a better alternative than our day in Bristol. We drove around so much and managed to see so much of the city, I was truly left in awe of the whole experience.

If there's one thing this journey has taught me, it's to be open to changes and be as free minded as you can possibly be. I've met so many new people during this trip not to mention different types of people. I've learned an incredible amount about myself as well as those around me. I've learned to be a lot more thankful about what I have and be happy for what others have that I may not.
If I were to do this trip again, or a different road trip in fact, I don't think I'd do it any differently apart from possibly travelling in a bigger car with a little more leg room. It was just one of those trips where I didn't even have my earphones in for half the time to 'slip away from reality' or whatever because after 5/6 songs, even the different drum beats and lyrically approved 'na na na's and 'yeah yeah yeah's got a little repetitive.
I'd rather be imagining myself with my future and equally as strange husband living in that deserted cottage we'd passed on the motorway on the way to London over generic pop music anyday.
Here's to making each and every trip you ever go on in life count.

Road-tripping part 1

I’ve always been a fan of the phrase, ‘getting there is half the fun’.

But now I realise it’s probably because I’ve not been to many places and I guess I found it consoling to say the least.

Fortunately, this week I had the privilege of going on a mini road trip with my family around the South of England and I’m happy to say I can finally break down the meaning of that phrase. I say I found it consoling but despite some of the fun being in the journey, it’s the actual places that really made my experiences worth it all.

Our first stop was at Stratford upon Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace and like many other people there, we also did the classic tourist things. The journey to Stratford was somewhat interesting though. We were supposed to leave the house at 8 in the morning to get there for 10 am and instead we left the house at 11. So naturally being the annoyed teenager in the family of 4, I didn’t take our lack of punctuality very well at first. About 30 minutes into the drive there I realised there was nothing I could do about what had already happened and so I calmed down like a cool person and decided to enjoy the ride. The usual cows and sheep either side of the motorway suddenly became 50 times more interesting to watch as did the endless green fields I wanted nothing better than to jump out of the car and roll around in. There were the odd lorries (aka trucks for my non-British readers) in front of the car ruining my view but- okay, there were lots and lots of lorries! The fact is, in between taking car selfies with the wind in my hair before my dad shouted at me for having the windows down, reading 10 pages of the book I told myself I’d finish on the journey only to get bored, arguing with my sister for letting her bag take up too much room in the empty seat between us, fighting over who got the last cookie in the packet and telling the lady in the sat-nav to shut up when her voice got too annoying, the car ride wasn’t all that bad.

We got to Stratford at around 2 o’clock and were still hyped about the trip despite being aware that all the attractions closed at 5 pm. So obviously, instead of getting straight into tourist-ing, my sister and I rushed around to find the nearest toilets. Thank god for the local BHS store that saved us from dying about 2 minutes away from where we parked our car.

We made our way through the city (which is rather small by the way) and found the main tourist site almost immediately. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as I imagined it to be and the singer who greeted us already got me in the mood to be all ‘Shakespeare-ean’. My sister and I spotted a very good looking knight to our right and rushed up to him being the 10 year olds we were and I dropped some change into little basket he had before going up to him. He held his hand out and it took me an entire 20 seconds to realise I was supposed to reciprocate before he took my hand and kissed it. I managed to hold in my squeal just in time for him not to hear it before he helped me up onto the little podium next to him for a picture.

We walked around the information museum first, which included a ton of very Shakespeare-ean stuff. Surprise, surprise! Quotes, original manuscripts, plaques, statues, artworks and the rest. I didn’t know about half of his sonnets and plays which led me to have spent a little longer than normal staring at any piece of work that had the words ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or Macbeth’ written on them seeing as they were the only notable works of his I was fully knowledgeable about. With everyone else around me seeming to know so much about the English playwright, I at least had to play the part of being a Shakespeare super fan, right?

Shakespeare’s house was amazing too. The best part had to be finding out why beds in his time were so small. It turns out, people in Shakespeare’s time had small beds because a) beds were incredibly expensive at the time and b) people went to sleep sat upright as they believed lying down and sleeping gave the impression that they had died and this would provoke the devil to suck their soul. And so to avoid the devil from mistaking death, people would sleep sat up-right so the devil knew they were awake. Creepy, I know. Explains why Shakespeare was so fond of killing off all his characters then.  The performances outside his house put on by actors were also pretty moving. My sister and I even managed to wait till after the performance to ask the actors for pictures with us. 

Another brilliant thing about Stratford had to be all the wicked shops either side of the road where Shakespeare’s birthplace is. We walked into the most amazing Christmas shop and at this point in this blog post I understand ‘amazing’ ‘incredible’ and ‘interesting’ are the only adjectives I seem to be using to describe everything, but there really are no words to explain how truly amazing and incredible and interesting the whole trip was. The door at the Christmas shop had the cutest Christmas countdown sign and I walked in wanting to buy everything. There were sweet shops and cute pubs and the locals walking around and about were ultra nice too. You’d think they’d get tired of all the people getting in their way every 2 seconds to take pictures in front of just about anything and everything in the city. ‘Oh, take a picture of me with this tree! Shakespeare must’ve walked past it! How about this random bush? Shakespeare must’ve stood near it! How about this pile of nothing? Shakespeare must've breathed here!’

All in all, the 4 hours I spent in Stratford upon Avon were certainly worthwhile even if we didn’t get to see all of the attractions, but considering any ticket you buy is valid for 12 months, we can always go back and finish touristing around. We’ve yet to visit Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and Shakespeare’s grave. Hall’s Croft (Shakespeare’s daughter’s house) has a gorgeous garden which was supposedly a sign of Susannah (Shakespeare’s daughter) and her husband’s prosperity. Their beds were also much bigger!

I think it’s also worth noting that this is my second time in Stratford. The last time I went was 3 years ago on an over-night school trip and I have to say the experience I had in the city back then was polar opposite to the one I had this week. The last time I went, the city was covered in snow and I’d had the pleasure of watching the best play I’ve seen to this day, ‘The Orphan of Zhao’. The streets might’ve been a tad too difficult to walk in being so slippery but the hotel and the play and the fancy dinner we had made it worthwhile for sure. I've added some pictures from my last visit too.

I’d definitely recommend a visit to Stratford upon Avon to anyone who’s looking for aesthetics, culture, rich heritage and a travel back through time for a day or an overnight stay if you’re in hopes of catching a late show at the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre. You won't be let down. 

And remember, getting there is only half the fun. 

Ticket to Success

'Money can't buy you happiness.'

I've always found that quote to be very interesting. Surely, we could all use a few more bucks in our pockets, but is it really what makes the world go around? 

I don't know about anyone else but personally I've always enjoyed working hard for a reward. The need for self gratification is a natural human instinct. We like assurance and structure despite telling ourselves we don't (or I do anyway). Fighting for a cause or working towards something always makes the end product 'worth it'. We strive towards goals and set ourselves aspirations in order to make better people out of ourselves.

So what happens to all of that when it all gets handed to you on a plate? What happens to self gratification and being able to be proud of yourself when money or power or status can get you your prize without having to work for it?

I've heard stories about people who from an outside perspective seemed to have it all, but inside they were only as good as the next man or woman. They'd been privileged with houses, cars and girls and despite all that, they slept less in a day than the woman who'd been pulling triple night shifts at work to provide for her children. Take drug lords in big Hollywood movies for example; is that really the life you want to be leading? Waking up every morning with the blood of more and more people on your hands who disagree against your money-making agendas? More famously, take reality TV stars the Kardashians and Jenners for example? Why is it fair for Kim Kardashian's sex tape-bought career to be the reason her half sister Kendall Jenner is Karl Lagerfeid and Olivier Rousteing's favourite muse when there are still millions of 17 year old girls trying to catch their big break in modelling by starving themselves to look like Kendall?
Isn't it the journey that always counts? When you struggle for something, doesn't it make the final product that much more worthwhile? Doesn't it give you a reason to remember the occasion for the rest of your lives? When you grow up, wouldn't you rather tell your kids about the story of how you had to fight for what you believed it to make something count than tell them you got your ticket to success by boarding the 'my-sister-released-a-sex-tape-and-got-our-entire-family-famous' train?
Success by default isn't something that should be handed to you, and even if it is, you shouldn't be happy taking advantage of it. You need to earn it.
Success is jumping up and down in happiness when your teacher gives you a sticker in nursery for that brilliant painting you did of your mum as a stick figured blob. Success isn't cheating and sneaking in to steal the page of stickers and sticking them all to your sticker-chart. It doesn't feel the same. Because it's not the same.
Success is staying up all night to finish that damn history report that you actually wrote all by yourself than getting full marks for copying and pasting that shit off wikipedia. It just isn't the same.
Buying your way to success labels you and puts a price on you.
True success is priceless. You can't buy it.
Success which is bought won't get you far. It will get you where you think you want to be but not where you truly belong. There's no merit to your so called success if you've achieved it by stabbing everyone that loves you in the back and lied and deceived your way through to get it. Neither is there any merit to success that isn't yours and simply your shot at someone else's hardwork.
Don't buy your ticket to success. Earn it.

'Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.' - Maya Angelou

Questions for the Fashion Industry

So very recently, fashion model and Vogue editor, Alexa Chung announced that she was going to lead a documentary series about the fashion industry and visit heads of major design houses, journalists buyers and all the workers in between. ‘Her goal is to find out what the future holds for this multi-billion industry; how the next generation will get careers using all the tools available to them; and what the landscape looks like in terms of sustainability and technology’.

This sounds like an incredible pitch already and I’m really excited for the series. Alexa posted a picture on her Instagram account asking her followers what kind of questions they’d want answered in this documentary and while flicking through them, I couldn’t help but be super intrigued by where some of these questions could possibly take this series.

And so I’ve taken the liberty of listing a few of those questions in the hope of getting more people’s minds jogging as well as appreciating how awesome the general online public are.

• How hard is it to get into the fashion industry once you’ve got a degree in fashion?
• How do you get people in the fashion industry to notice you?
• What advice is there to give to a 17 year old girl who wants to become a fashion buyer in the future?
• How strong is the competition between fashion designers? Does Balmain really want to be pictured next to someone wearing Alexander McQueen? Do they work together or fight for the limelight?
• How do you start in the modelling business?
• How can you make the most out of the clothes you already have instead of getting new things?
• What do you think of all the hype concerning the fashion industry? Especially from the young demographic?
• Do you think personality has a lot in relation to how far you can go into the fashion industry or is ti all about looks?
• What makes a designer unique among the rest?
• What classifies as a ‘fashion trend’? How do you decide what’s fashionable and what’s not? What influences a trend? Trend agencies? Tendsetters? Celebrities or cultural influences?
• What do you think about the warped beauty ideals that many designers profit from? How can a girl enjoy fashion without feeling badly about her bodu?
• Do you think originality establishes the goodness of someone's streetstyle sense and does having a stylist for streetstyle purposes make it less authentic?
• How sustainable is the fashion industry through all levels, from the raw materials through to production and distribution?
• Are fashion houses, designers and brands aware of the conditions that workers that are in the mass production of their clothes? Are there strict regulations in pace and are they enforced?
• How do you get ahead and stand out in the fashion industry in a world where everyone who takes a few pictures and post them on Instagram can claim to be a fashion photographer, blogger or fashion influencer?
• Who is actually making these clothes and they are getting paid anywhere near the amount the designer companies get? Why are the designer clothes so pricey and where does the money go?
• Why don't designers consider shorter models?
• How do you juggle being a respected persona in the fashion industry and not losing who you are? Is it hard to stay true to yourself or does your career and lifestyle go hand in hand? Are there do’s and don’t’s in fashion?
• How much damage is done to the environment for these mostly frivolous shows? How many young men and women are warped and starved into an anorexic fashion industry scale? Is every person in the industry as vapid as they seem to be?
• Most designer houses have been successful through many generations. What keeps them so resilient throughout all these decades? How does Chanel stay so relevant besides the name of course?
• Who does the fashion industry really consist of? Not only the designers, models, the tailors and the audience but what about the people who create the runway music and show setting in general? Or the people choosing the fabric?
• How do small things such as the drawing inspiration (colours etc) translate through to a fashion collection?
• How involved are the top designers with their products? Do they palm off a lot of the work to others and stick the brand names on the end?
• How does the pricing process work in the fashion industry? Things like Ellie Saab gowns are super expensive because we see the process of their workers hand beading everything but there’s a lot of brands in between that and the local ‘Target’ store that put huge prices on extremely simple looking clothes.

So there you have it. A few questions I pulled through from what people asked Alexa Chung to talk about in her documentary series. If any of them made you think that much more about the industry we’re all so infatuated with, well my post did its job.