Stop and smell the flowers

"They seemed to be hardly Railway children at all in those days, and as the days went on each had an uneasy feeling about this which Phyllis expressed one day. 
"I wonder if the Railway misses us," she said, plaintively. "We never go to see it now."
"It seems ungrateful," said Bobbie; "we loved it so when we hadn't anyone else to play with..." 
 The Railway Children, E Nesbit


 When I first moved to London I chose my student accommodation based on its proximity to Columbia Road Flower Market. It is one of my favourite places and in my first year I found myself there most Sunday mornings, smelling the flowers and listening to the stallholders calling out the prices of snapdragons and tulips.

If I'm honest though, one of the reasons I would go there was because I didn't have much else to do on a Sunday, or anyone to do it with. Leaving home for the first time was lonely. But instead of feeling lonely in my room I went out and explored. The flowers and coffee shops and markets were my company.

That was two years ago: I now feel lucky to have made lovely friends and to have a busy balance of seeing them and working on my final university project. But this morning I woke up and realised that it has been nearly a year since I visited Columbia Road.

Final year is hectic so technically I should probably have spent today working on my dissertation, but after spending a stressful Saturday at university I decided that flowers would be good for my soul.

I headed to Columbia Road with my camera and enjoyed a day of perfect loneliness. I ate cake alone and smiled at strangers and bought myself roses - because everyone deserves roses every now and then. It is lovely to have other people to make me happy (and even to buy roses for me) but it is also nice to spend days like these by myself, taking joy in the smell of the flowers. Friends make me very happy but it is good to remind myself that I can make me very happy too.

(Cake and roses help.)

Libby

Dreaming of Paris

Last night I dreamt of Paris. Here are some photos I took last time I was there visiting my best friend Juliette...

Libby

Happy Halloween

Tonight is the only night of the year when it is OK for children to mug their neighbours for sweets and when you can pass a werewolf in the street and not bat an eyelid. The pumpkins are glowing and the fireworks are fizzing: Happy Halloween.

Instead of joining the festivities I am sat at my 'desk' (in other words the kitchen table that I have claimed for my own in my shared flat) surrounded by piles of notes, elbow deep in research for my university final major project. You think ghosts and goblins are scary? This is scary.

At the moment thinking about my final project feels like standing at the bottom of a mountain in a pair of flipflops. But even scarier than the thought of how I will climb over all this work is the thought of what I will do when it is over. After three years of study I will have come to the end of what has at times felt like a trek, but really it has just been the warm-up lap before a marathon.

When I graduate I need to get a job, but the more I hear about graduate unemployment the more this prospect terrifies me. Especially when I talk to more and more young graduates who are working for free or who have had to give up on their dreams (and careers that they have trained for) because they can't afford to not to get paid for their time. This is why I am continuing to investigate and campaign against unpaid internships: because I know the thought of graduating and finding a job sends shivers up the spines of most young people, and because I don't think it is fair that wealth should be the real USP that you need to get ahead.

I am going to a fancy dress Halloween party on Friday and had been struggling with costume ideas. I now know what I'm going to go as. An unemployed graduate.

Libby

Autumn and the early bird

I am not a night owl. It is not even 8pm and I am already feeling sleepy. It probably goes without saying then that I am not my most productive in the evening. I am well into the first term of my final year at uni and weighed down with work. But instead of staying up all night I have taken to getting up early instead.

However stressed I may have felt the night before, I (nearly) always leap (or sometimes roll) out of bed feeling like the world is a wonderful place. I love sitting in my kitchen with my notes and my books, enjoying a proper breakfast whilst I watch the sun rising -  it feels like I am being let in on a secret. Even if it is raining morning rain seems far more poetic than the gloom of night time rain. Or at least it does to me.

This year is largely about independent study so without a timetable telling me when to work I am making my own schedule. Today I decided to fit in a break of fresh air and headed out to Clapham Common with my camera to kick through the leaves and get away from the web of post-it notes and papers that has ensnared my bedroom.

I woke up to sunshine but after a day of work and more work the evening gloom is starting to descend again. But it's ok. There's always tomorrow.

 

Reasons to love autumn:

Painted orange trees

Leaves that say shhhh when you kick them

Hot chocolate

Sequin wellies

Puddles that you can see your face in

Afternoon light that looks like maple syrup

Libby

Why I am not watching The Work Experience

It is very rare that I get angry. But my blood is boiling. Last night I saw an advert for The Work Experience on E4, a mock sitcom that follows the experiences of two interns in a fashion PR agency. Unbeknown to the interns the PR agency is a set-up and the tasks they are asked to perform (exposing an illegal sweatshop and collecting a celebrity’s sperm sample being two examples) are not real tasks. I find the whole concept for the programme, which launches tonight, not just tasteless, but offensive.

The Work Experience may be a ‘mockumentary’, but this is real. I am a final year fashion journalism student and have done seven work experience placements, ranging from national newspapers and magazines to a local paper in London. I feel grateful for the experiences I have had and for the insight they have given me into the industry I want to work in, but there have been moments when my eagerness has been tested. I am still searching to find exactly what I learnt from delivering personal dry cleaning, doing personal ironing or steaming clothes for nine hours without a break. But despite the errands I have been asked to undertake on work experience I feel lucky: my experiences are nothing compared to the horror stories that I have heard from my peers. You do the job because you want a job, and the reality is that there isn’t much you wouldn’t do. The real rub comes when you remember that you are not even being paid.

Exploitation of young people in the fashion industry is endemic, yet it is an issue that remains largely unchallenged. Who wants to be the ‘work experience’ (as we are referred to) who complained? I certainly didn’t think that it would be me.

That was until I remembered that journalism is about having a voice. Instead of investigating a real issue within its own industry The Work Experience makes a cheap joke out of a serious situation. And the only reason it gets away with it is that the group of people it represents have no way of retaliating – they have no voice. But I am ‘the work experience’, and I am not laughing.

At the end of the programme, and after the degrading tasks the interns perform, the set-up is revealed and the lucky pair are offered a month’s work experience placement at a real fashion PR agency. At least the placement is paid, but it makes me wonder what lengths I am expected to go to as a young person trying to make a career for myself. Everyone has to start from the bottom, but where does experience end and exploitation begin?

Libby

Are you defined by your degree?

“So then, what do you study?” is a question that I have come to dread. I may be having an interesting conversation with the person I have just met, but as soon as I answer ‘fashion journalism’ the cloud descends. The cloud is a shadow that passes inadvertently across the face of the person I am talking to and that fogs their perception of me. I see myself reflected in their eyes and watch as my IQ drops.

Of course, not everyone reacts this way, but I have become so used to the negative reactions (“Why would you want to do that?” is rarely a question. Give me a chance to tell you!) that I have started making excuses for myself before I even begin.

“I study journalism,” is how I usually start, perhaps followed by a sheepish, “specialising in fashion.”

The raised eyebrows that follow are the telling sign. As soon as I add fashion I become an airhead.

I study fashion journalism because I find it interesting. Most of all I find people interesting, and despite the inaccessibility (and often absurdity) of catwalks and couture, fashion is one of the greatest unifiers. You might say you are not interested in clothes, but you still wear them. I am interested in the business of fashion: it is a huge industry that affects so many people and generates huge amounts of wealth (and equally destruction). I am interested in the history of fashion, its social context and how it acts as a barometer of the times. I am interested in the psychology of clothes, and how what we wear affects how we feel and how people treat us.

Although I enjoy talking about and sharing what I do, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to justify myself. The sheepishness with which I talk about my course is so at odds with the way I talk about other things when I meet someone for the first time that it is not a true reflection of who I am: I am a confident, independent woman and I love meeting new people. But that is the point: I may feel the need to define my course, but it doesn’t define me. And it certainly doesn’t make me the stereotype that I know so many people see when I tell them what I do.

Today I well and truly let down the fashionista stereotype by tucking into a 12 inch pizza for my lunch. I may study fashion, but I would rather spend my money on pizza than shoes. There are so many sides to me that have nothing to do with my degree and that are at odds with perceptions of a fashion student. I study fashion journalism but I like books and burgers and baking, and I have more opinions than I have handbags. 

Libby

Don't let the bastards grind you down

 Sometimes life can make you feel like a paper doll that has been thrown in the washing machine on an an intense-clean cycle. You spin round and round and slosh up and down until you eventually turn to pulp.

Here are a few reasons why recently I have been feeling particularly like mushed up and soggy paper:

1) Fresher's flu. And I'm not even a fresher.
2) Dissertation angst.
3) Final university project angst.
4) I graduate next year.
5) What am I going to do with my life?
6) Am I ever going to get a job?
7) Am I ever going to get a job that isn't working in Macdonald's?
8) I wrote an article about unpaid internships and people keep telling me how brave I am.
9) This makes me slightly worried.
10) Rain.
11) The Great British Bake Off has finished.

Don't let the bastards grind you down. That was my inspiration for this outfit. Life may feel like a giant washing machine at times, but you just have to dry yourself off, stick yourself back together and remember what you believe in. And I believe in pink, I believe in smiling and I believe in not just waiting for the storm to pass, but learning how to dance in the rain.

 

(And I believe in cake). 

Libby