Posts

What is Love, in the 21st Century? (A poem for Valentines Day)

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   What is love, in the 21st century? Tinder, Bumble, elite, match. We all wonder, what is our destiny But can never seem to find,  the right catch.   What is love, in the 21st century? Taking numbers, swapping Facebooks Oh wait, but what if he's a narcissist-  Better not let him off the hook.   What is love in the 21st century? Meaningless sex, and ST'I's.   What is love, in the 21st century? LGBT- are you straight, Gay or Bi?   What is love in the 21st century? Take it slow, nah, Let's get a mortgage Oh wait- he must be a narcissist   What is love, in the 21st century? #datenightwithhubby #letsgetthebubbly   What is love in the 21st century? Date nights? Nah- couples on their phones   What is love, in the 21st century? Oh, hang on, global pandemic- Outside takeaways  #pandemicdating   What is love in the 21st century? I'm really not sure-   ...

Corona: The virus that broke Capitalism

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 28th December 2020.  As I sit in my living room (the norm of the year) watching a comedy which looked back on how  ridiculous 2020 has been, I can feel anger rising, and I'm not normally an angry person.  For my entire life, I've always felt like I've been searching. Searching for what, I don't know, but in the last couple of months, I've had a lot of flashlight moments, and a lot of anger building up inside.  Augusto Boal, a theatre director famous for his creations of the Forum and Invisible Theatre techniques (where the audience, or witnesses, are fully involved with the actors) claims that politics is our 'sovereign art' while Paulo Freire- an educator and philosopher- claims that 'education should create freedom'.  Now, the comedy I was watching, combined with debates and essays I've written on my MA- have given me another flashlight moment: it's not the coronavirus that's breaking the world- it's actually proving how much we DE...

Rhetorical Questions: What's the best thing about being a woman?

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 Recently at my drama school, there was a poster up on the toilet doors (on the inside, yes!) asking, "What is the best thing about being a woman?" It was probably up for about a month or so.  Yet, only ONE person had written on any of the posters that had been stuck up. The answer was: "THE PHYSICAL ASPECTS!" So basically, their body. But what does this mean? Firstly, I was shocked that only one person had written anything. Secondly, that the only thing that person could reply was that their body was the best thing about being female.  I've noticed, particularly over the course of 2020 (the year of doom) or at least I feel- do we, as women, talk enough to each other about being women? 2020 has been a year of constant health worries for everyone, all genders alike.  There are certain aspects of my health as a woman that I've really struggled with, emotionally as well as mentally.  But it's only since opening up and talking to my friends about these issue...

When Panic Strikes: Keep Calm and Carry On

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 I've navigated myself across the subway in NYC; through the crazy  Asian cities of Bankok and Ho Chi Minh; waited for hours and  hours for delayed flights on my travels in Vietnam;  and even clutched onto a puppy for dear life  while on the back of a moped.  I've also had an extra night in Boston when a flight wasn't going out due to  weather...or something along those lines.  (Bankok skyeline) I have so many travelling nightmares, but in all that time I managed  to navigate myself in  not just one, but a few foreign countries where English  was far from the first language.  Yet the two times I've experienced panic attacks have both been in London.  How does this make sense? The first attack struck on my way to Roehampton Uni, about two years ago,  when I was runningvery late and none of the taxi services were available.  (I arrived half an hour late on the first evening.) This week on my way up to Mountview, I ...

The Road to Home: Life after Travelling

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 As I embark not on a plane, but on my MA, I feel a new sense of beginnings, amongst a world of chaos.  I recently began typing up the diaries I had kept while travelling in Thailand and Vietnam, and it got me wondering about how we are all searching for the same thing in life: a sense of belonging.  I remember landing in Bankok airport, suddenly feeling as though I belonged. It was a very new feeling, and I couldn't recall feeling that sense of ease and happiness anywhere else.  My expedition in Vietnam didn't quite go according to plan. I should technically still be there, but it seemed as though the world had other plans... Yesterday was my first day on campus for my Masters degree. As I came out of Peckham Rye station, I suddenly realised that we don't always need to travel hundreds of miles to find  the culture fix we might want, or for an exciting new life abroad that we all dream of. I noticed that I was walking through an African area. Street-markets, na...

What it's REALLY like to live with a Special Educational Need

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So, I've been wanting to write this one for a while,  but have been unsure how to write it, as I will have lots of  ex-colleagues who may well be reading this. I'm going to try and be 'positively' realistic - if that's actually a phrase! Dyspraxia is one of those that some of you may know a little about,  but might confuse it with dyslexia. For those of you that have't heard of dyspraxia at all,  the best way to describe it (without using any dictionary definitions)  is as a struggle with co-ordination, spacial awareness,  and a different way of thinking- how we process the information around us, and given to us.  While I was  still working as a Learning Support Assistant,  my colleagues put on a video in an assembly about autism.  The narrator asked, 'Is the wold too bright, too loud and too fast?' This made me really stop and think about who I am,  and how my dyspraxia affects me.  My answer to this question is- YES. The worl...

The Western World: A negative Culture?

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Once again, Boris Johnson has claimed that  obesity is a massive problem in the UK. Watching the news headlines over the last couple of weeks,  has made me really question  the Western ways of life, and our culture as a whole.  For some reason, the coronavirus has hit the West pretty awfully. But why -  is it the way our government have handled the pandemic? Is it our possible lack of cleanliness that we hadn't realised before?  (Which is ironic, because a doctor in Vietnam commented  that I had come from a clean country!) Is it our 'over- confidence' in the NHS? Or have we developed other deeper habits that have affected us,  without us even noticing? Vietnam have only had 300 cases, and ALL of them survived.  So where have we gone wrong? As I listened to a radio discussion yesterday about various current political topics,  including obesity, I wondered if we have created a nega...