The difficulties of being an artist and how i see things explained

I have a problem with being an artist but I have a problem with being anything else.

When I look at other artists, I have the same disparaging view as I get from what I know when they say, 'I am an artist'.  Mainly because I studied so many artists at University and worked at more than a few Galleries after studying Fine Art in the same establishments that they went to instead of to LEARN THE THEORY FROM OTHER ARTISTS so I know a little more about what being an artist MEANS.

I am anti-establishment and daily have the same restlessness that other artists in time have had.  This unsettling unhappiness with the way that other people cannot see the world or daily life in the same eyes as I can is something that I struggle with my patience for.  I am interested in graphic design and advertising but could not happily work for someone else in an office as I have tried this before and it is just a waste of spurted energy as I come across so many people living life in THEIR way which is so diamettrically opposite to how I live MY LIFE.  I question myself in the role of an artist every second of everyday.  It is not a pleasant feeling because as an artist, you are outside of the box and it is a LONELY affair.  And the loneliness only gets worse the more you stay in the real world of other people than if you were to resign yourself to the way you are as an artist and try to settle that inner innate question of changing how people SEE THINGS.  THAT is the only thing that could settle my inner turmoil.  And it IS an inner turmoil.  SIMPLY BECAUSE it is so out of the box.

Even now I question why to be an artist instead of some guy in advertising or a graphic designer.  But to me, the art of a graphic designer is very much about the similiar way of getting peoples attention to change the way they look at things, it's just that you have to be GOOD at doing a job.  And you have to therefore be in the same system which as an artist you are outside of - the commercial sector.  Or the corporate sector.  To be a convincing artist, the problem of even charging for your work is a GREAT ONE.

Because you are questioning all of the time, the work you make is a response to the inner question, and THAT THEREFORE BECAUSE it is art you are making, why put any price on it at all?  You have to put a grandiose price upon it as that is funny and a laugh at the whole establishment that you don't believe in. (The capitalist one) SO the only way to MAKE MORE of your social response to in the form of art, IS TO SELL your work in the first instance.  As THEN you can make MORE stuff which is therefore using more expensive materials which therefore captures the imagination of the buyer more as it is more expensive in PROCESS.


BUT THE PROCESS OF MAKING ART IS THE EXACT SAME WHETHER YOU USE THE FINEST MATERIAL OR THE LOWEST BUDGET MATERIAL EVER.  As they say, a toolsman blames his tools.  When your tools are fabulously good (And looking at my drawings I know this to be true) then it is inconsequential what tools you use EXCEPT FOR them you being a slave to the establishment that buys your work in order for you to make more.  And if you MAKE MORE work and it IS MORE FREEING TO BE ABLE TO MAKE BIG MASSIVE WORK as then your work gets seen by more and it MEANS MORE as it is closer to CHANGING PEOPLES PERCEPTION OF HOW THEY SEE, then it is WORTH putting a price on it.  The art market has ALWAYS revolved around the normal economic market as it is quite unquantifiable.  Having knowledge of this myself as I have worked at galleries.

SO, THIS is the way I see things, and it is singular to me.  And my art has changed in its conception as my views on the world have changed, and what unsettles me has changed as I question more and more what I see as people living out fairly boring existances.  Therein the artistic quest is more needed to be heard, and therein I am yet more troubled as I sound YET MORE mental as I think in an 'Out-there' kind of way, and it would make everyones lives easier (my parents especially) if I just got a job and didn't follow this silly thing about art.  But it has always been my only interest and the only cure for my restless nature.  That is the way that I am wired.  I cannot help the way that I am wired but I CAN help myself by just going with it.  Even though one is up against a LOT of shit as an artist (And fellow artists that produce poor examples of art being on fine example.  I do not want to be within the same defined brackets as MEDIOCRE artists.  And I have AVOIDED that by avoiding being caught-up in the shit quagmire that so-called artists are up in at the moment)


Here is a formula for how I see things - 

Colour - you see first (As you feel it)
Form - you see second as you SEE it in the empirical world around you
EQUALS (an infinite thing so You can go back on the equation at any time and put it in any way at all and it still is there making sense)
Light - what you see (My formula is qualifying SEEING itself)

So, as a formula it is (C + F = L)2

But within that, F - for Form, already has a formula.  So you would insert the formula for F within those brackets if you wanted to, in order to describe more detail)

C = colour (That initial thing you see even when you close your eyes (Thought)  Automatic writing could connate te same.  But essenatilly it is the REASON WHY purple the colour is known as the third-eye in spiritually engaged people)

L = light, = vision (The whole thing about vision is it comes as one (infinity) with colour and form)



But I need structure in order to communicate this formula ~ A PICTURE.  The ONLY WAY to DESCRIBE seeing things in this way is to draw/paint it.  It doesn't need to effect social change, it is just a dialogue with other art works that have influenced me over time and what I actually believe in.

Vision is inifinite.

A thought -

If you were to think in an abstract way, therefore not paying attention to detail, then you need the structure of a grid in order to make a flying thought rational,  As people we need rational and read newspapers that are all according to a grid.  (The bare format of a newspaper, or of graphic design)

Therefore, abstract thought only makes sense in a readable way when positied with rational grid, (linerar thought) nonetheless it makes sense anyway as it is metaphysics (philosphy in its essential form).

This is a mixture of an old piece I wrote when I was fixated on metaphysics.  But you need to think about how and why and what which IS physics, in order to see the space in life.  The space in life that the Cubists pointed out or the space in life today which font-designers point out.  The reasons as to WHY the arial font is more readable to you, the reasons for THE EFFECT that a font has on HOW YOU READ SOMETHING.  How we can be affected by the space of feeling in life all around us on a daily basis if only we looked at things more.


HERE IS MY MANIFESTO I used for a recent show.  It should explain the tenets of my own theory. 

Yes, finally breaking through into a new type of deconstruction.

Quite glad to have arrived at this point. The gaps between the letters typed into a facebook message for example. My 'show' will only be hoping loads of other people can just use my old stuff for whatever they want to, wipe their nose on it, write a poem over it, step on it. All of that kind of stuff. Not a performance piece. Originality is banality to a certain extent.

All about things not going according to plan. Just a bunch of paper. And a bunch of people. Trying to get that FIGURATIVE space to make the essential marks. If a mark is even needed. Fuck whatever else according to whatever else themes.

It's about not owning anything you make. It's not why I made things, like drawings. Drawings are copying. Essentially. Drawing past that, is the more interesting thing. That ledge between ledgibe and unledgible. That part that makes everyone feel a bit disturbed, the [out=there] ness.

That makes sense to me. So empirical stuff is just not challenging enough these days.

Phew, that was a big message wasn't it. But it is helpful to me to think through what might happen, or might not happen. That bit BEFORE thought - THAT is WHAT i am interested in. What even IS THAT?!

ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha 

What Sundays are for


What Sundays are for
The chores - those bores, 
For the pores to regain focus after the Night 
Befores' Hocus Pocus


For the Non compos mentis to go away
You could pray 
Or watch a bunch of sportstars play on tele
Go for a walk in wellies
Fill up your bellies with Roasts or 
Cheese on toast
Or if you are Roman Catholic, the Host


Sundays are not Mondays
And there must be a reason for that
You hang out with your dog or your cat
Or you hang loose in a duvet
Or hoover
Or move her 
Or the him, or the hymn
From the night before dimness sets-in 
And the working week begins
Move them out of your bed, your head, 
From sharing your Ted, 
Say goodbyes, hit high-fives, 
Soak it all in with a pint
In your local
Full of other locals
Nobody ever really knows but 
Don't Tell


Eastenders omnibus is on BBC ONE
And you can watch the soap opera 
From start to finish
In two hours it can't diminish
The DRAMA is always worse than your own


And for drinking,
It helps thinking, which is what Sundays are for,
That quiet gap
The stopover motorway services in the road ahead
And your bed
You can clean the sheets
Or clean your teeth
If you forgot to at all in the last weeks trawl


Fishing trawlers - you could go to the Sea
In theory
You can see a picture of the Horizon 
In more Clarity 
Than any other day of the week
Even if it's only on the TV


So that's what Sundays are for
Writing poems, calling friends, chatting shit, having the bends
All of that in a single day
The day you don't have to do anything
Yet you still get around time to do
What you want to


I love Sundays 

Middle-Managers

Oh I am going to do it.  Against my best interests, and with a heavy heart.  Solidly because no middle managers I have ever worked for will be reading my blogpost - and also because it is a subject so close to my heart it almost falls into palpitations at the very scheme of your average Johnny Middle Manager typecast.

I have experienced Middle Managers personally across a very many kind of different working environments. I have also come across them in life.  In the guise of friends who seem to pass and go as often as a thought might cross your mind, and also my friend has just extolled a tale of his own experiences with a Middle Manager kind of geezer.  And I can pixellate my own kallaida-skope (private reference to my own middle manager jaunt.  You won't get it) with his.  If the need comes to it.
I don't think it's particularly necessary to envelop this blog with a homage to the MnM. (The anacronym I will be using).  I don't feel like sullying my page with their sullen faces, when a cup is left at a dodgy angle for instance - premeditating a huge and all-emcompassing biblical style deluge as would have been avoided if the REDEMPTION offered in the Health and Safety guidelines CLEARLY OUTLINED.

No no no.  I will merely pay an account to the general theme and 'Articulate' race of these articulated lorries of terrible human beings in this blog.  That would be far more amusing.  Laughter keeps them at bay.  It is the garlic to the Vampire.  The crux in the crucifix seperating their jaws from devouring Common Sense and Decency.  So we can just use that, rather than go there way and walk their line into being spoken about.
Because I believe, that is why they do it.

So- we do an overview of various occasions (all metaphorical of course) of where and when one might have encountered such a MnM.

1.) The titan of MnM in Media - The Daily Mail.

This is not an original casting session.  It is just that if I was assistant bookings agent at a line call-up of MnM across Life, I would be sure to encounter the Daily Mail near to the front of the queue, jauntily stuffing out a cigarette in the pavement before shouting at the street-sweeper to come and do his f-ing job as he is paying for it.

We ALL pay for the DM.  The closeness of DeMon here is without the need to be pointed out.  Each new day brings a fresh oppurtunity to further empower the army of MnMs scattered throughout Middle England.  The version of Middle England which makes me feel like self-diagonising myself with ME and staying in bed. Just in case I come across literally ANY of them, the readers, in real life.  And AS the DM has a big readership, I am afraid that there are a lot of them out there.  Zombies.  Some read them for fun.  My journalist friend informs me correctly that the online source (A MASSIVE hit in America) known as the Right Hand Column is referred to in the journo circles in the know as the 'Weighty' column.  Specifically one place we can all go to to laugh at various cele-breties 'cele-bravities'.  Such as wearing a bikini on a boat in Summer.  Cere-brial breakthrough.

It only encourages more shit to come to the surface for the MnMs who have never really been picked for a team at a school sports day.  So, just bare in mind their informed badly spent youth.  These are their PAYBACK times.  They can pronounce all of the political correctness gone mad that they want.  They can boil it up in a cup of lukewarm tea, and carefully remind readers that England is currently under attack.  Not only from immigrants, religious extremeists and OBESE people, but ALSO from shallow people who only meant to bring entertainment into their lives through their talent, but who ALSO have the audacity to SHOVE IT IN THEIR FACES by 'yaughting about all day' and also having, not PERFECT bodies at the exact same time.

The CHEEK of it.  It really gets my gall.  Bladder.  Bladder to them all.

2.) The Political MnMs
We exclude honourable ones such as Simon Hughes (my friends godfather no less) who is the CLASSIC example of an incredible force for good against MnMs and may he remain in the Commons with the common touch for as long as he wants.

Boris.  Old Bozza, is the archetypal form of the MnM to name a name isn't he.  You know you all want to say yes.  You want to agree because there is just something not right about his jovial 'here we go' spirit in the run-up to a) the Olympics b) the Boris Bikes (with Kelly Brook appearing in a positively stupid near state of undress for press campaign shots c) his Mayoral campaign.  I am not going into anything personal on this level as that would be just the kind of thing an MnM would allude to, when it is not relevant whatsoever.

It is the VOICE of the MnM I am alluding to.  The silly posters advising each Londoner to avoid travelling into work in their normal way, via a humurously patronising cartoon.  Or the PINK used in the London Underground to represent the WAY TO GO for various tourist sites - which PLAINLY not even PALIN-LY, are what tourists already buy tourist site books for.  They are not that stupid.  They can even read English.  And why on earth Pink?  To represent 'The Gays?'  To help the gays to go the right direction for the parties?  Or for the children?  Or what.  I don't know.  But I find it, for one incredibly irritating having the silly stickers on view each time I take the tube.  And this diminishes in direct proportion to (exponentially?) the closeness we get to the BOLympics.  I hope they get taken down.  When decent irreverant street art stickers are taken down by cleaners running along with MnMs guidelines and the alternative is state-sponsored (Mainly Lononder sponsored) stickers.  Well, enough said on that.

3.) Third in line, would be those 'Homey Types' of Homo Sapiens MnMs.
You know, the ones who write the shows that consistently pop up on your television informing you on how to 'Spruce up your garden' or make your front room look better.  Or how to eat better.  Or how to not get fat or how to get thin or how to not get unhealthy or how to eat correctly or how to do HOW TO things such as put up a shelf all by yourself.
They just make everything so much easier don't they.  I would have forever been terrified of getting out my rudimentary vacuum hoover had it not been informed in briefing alongside, thanks to a tree somewhere, a paper version of HOW THINGS WORK.

I am not talking about the Delia Smiths.  Nor the Jamie Olivers.  More the Linda Barkers.  (Who I was in a lift with the other day.  Damn she looked so shiny!  Perhaps I SHOULD re-watch Changing rooms, the very beginning of her home range etc etc etc. )

You can't blame paper for where there is a demand.  I once worked at a place where there was actually a Poem entitled Don't Walk By, and in the very same language as Rudyard Kipling had penned the seminal 'What If' we have the lexical totally shattered by an emotional poem that handily at the same time, informs people to Tell Someone, if they see a fax machine unplugged for instance.

Clip Art is also, I'm afraid, a telling sign of the MnM

That is the type of MnM we encounter on a daily basis.  That is immunity.  However, seeing it as a form of entertainment on TV is more problemmatic.  I don't know what to do about that, but throw my hands up at it.

4.)  MnMs like me, who try and point this out.  There are loads of them as well.

This is the personal sting.  I am guilty of being a Middle Manager.  Because none of the things I am saying are at all original.  Everybody thinks them or writes about them.  They just chose to ignore them and get on with the actual art of living.  AND THIS is where MnMs beat all.  I would never say I was one.  GOD NO. But I am still commenting on other people aren't I.  And anyway, afterall, none of its all THAT important.

Hence I find an end to this blog update.

And go off to cry silently into my heart-shaped Ikea pillow, you know, that really tacky one that you saw on all those advertisements, the one everyone said - OH GOD THAT IS SO UGLY WHO THE HELL WOULD BUY THAT.

Well, I got it as a gift.  I didn't get foresight as a gift.  I didn't get the implications of how much worse this cry is going to feel now I am one of THEM who has FALLEN for the advertising of the MnM.

I DID cut out the label pointing out how to wash it however, I shall exclusively be washing it in my own hypocritical tears.

It even has arms FFS 

Yo Beyonce - stop with the nonce (accent excluded)

Yo,

So I was intending to come and write a post about feminism, positing Beyonce Knowles with her recent track, 'Who Runs the World' against Joan Smiths 'Misogonies.'

But then I realised that feminism has advanced in enough a form for me to speak about something else.

Something omissing / missing from our Olympic-hype uprun.  The riots.  From Last Year.

Just walking down my road towards the nearest internet cafe where I was to write my piece, I glimpsed upon a phone eavesdrop from a lady wearing a JAMAICA top chatting shit to someone about 'Only English people get this'.  Her son was about 5 and wearing a Kanye West t-shirt.  (I approve of the Culture bringing us together against government shit that divedes us but STILL.)

This time last year, I was living in Dalson.  I remember well the night that the riots hit our area.  I remember staying inside, and being totally confused by the helicopters buzzing overhead.  I remember the cool feeling the next day that our local Turkish shopkeepers had protected their businesses from the rioters (Young Kids) and remember also, my mate, from Scotland, who had just finished a recital on his fiddle, who then decided to cycle back to his fiddlesticks in Bethnal Green, against my advice, so that he then got chased and he injured himself whilst running from a crowd who were after his Bike.

I remember all this above hearing the smug Boris Yeltsin/Johnson tannoy announcement recently, when I was on a train headed home.  His posh Eton voice, bringing all of its aristocratic verve to us commuters, reassured us that millions of people were coming....SO WE HAD BETTER BE NICE.

WELL.  One thing is.  One Year Is.  Not good enough to force yet more pressure on us Londoners.

Just what has been done about the Riots of this time last year?  Is it the Pink Elephant in the room?  Yes it is.

Because we all knew about the funding that was going into the Opening Ceremony back last year.  When Danny Boyle is creating a piece worth many millions, in the very borough that many of the worries came out of, and the WORTH of his idea is further speculated in the Media.  Does this help anyone? 

How important it is to represent London along the good capital country vibes that it represents, is true.  It is cool- it is an all-embracing country.  And Danny Boyle can hopefully translate some decent values to the World about what the London Olympics is about.  But as far as TEAMSPIRIT goes - HOW MUCH has changed, since this time last year?  How much has been addressed and combatted for the people who were so desperate that they went on the rob.  That it all seemed a game, because reality seemed so utterly shit.

Doing SPORT is fine.  It is a great outlet for people who need it.  It helps communities and indivuals symbiotically.  But analytically, how much has the London Olympic Games helped us to progress from Last Summer?

I don't know.  I would hope that we can learn from this Olympic Games.
I hope that it offers more HOPE for the people involed in the Riots.  From the Givers to the Haters.

But I find it quite distasteful, that nobody seems to have acknowledged the suffering that goes along with living in London at the same time.

We can only wait and see.  

What is love.

Love is a quiet thing.
When you match someone else
In the Whole World

And it is frightening

And it makes you feel a bit sick
Because you never really want to go with it
Let go with it

Because it is something so mysterious
Something so serious
And a vow
Which you never want to really take
Because of all of the other things at stake

You are meant to live
A life that you want
And the thought of being led
Astray
By the way-side
Is scary

To try

It is better to know
Though
That being alone is fine
And you can always be alone
And defined
By that person

It is just that
There is someone with whom
To share that
At your own pace
And in your own race

So you can relax
And wonder
At it

The 'INVISIBLE GALLERY'

So impersonal that it's personal.

"Can I quite believe my senses?!"

This is what many visitors will ask at the Haywards 'Invisible Exhibition.'

Eleven Questions people who try to make it 'Intelligent' and 'Progressive' expect you to ask:-

1.  Is the picture (Film/negative film/la-di-dah *yawn*) there really?

2.  Is the map indicating where the pictures are really real?

3.  Does this reflect a wider socio-economic response in arts for our current time?

4.  How many people will complain and ask for their money back?

5.  Am I close-minded if I think this is all a load of bollocks?

6.  Does this mean the point is the laugh is on us?  *

7.  Hasn't this been done many times before?

8.  So yes, however is this some kind of warped post-post-post modernist reference to 'What the nature of Art is?'

9.  How much bullshit is the average person in the gallery right now, expected to take?

10.  Does this help as a gage of our point of MAXIMUM on the 'State Of The Arts Today' Bullshitometer?

11.  Is there anything, ANYTHING LORDY, better to expect in the future?


I would go, however I will chose to save £8 ENTRY FEE and instead, walk idly aroudn the bookshelves of my local library.  Where I can ponder a positively less nihilistic survey of Human Achievement.


The 'Gimmick', is in the whole, 'If you don't go, you won't know, or be able to judge, SO'

Well, I  my friend, and critic, have been stuck in a lift before.

And it wasn't particulary uplifting.  The opposite of that obviously.


In answer, I don't need to be depressed and belittled as a human spectator.  There is no 'Us' (Who don't get it) and 'Them' (Who get it) in  authentic art.

As appendage, I would say a distinct and emphatic, 'Fuck Off' to the critics who professionally feign encouragement to curious people, to waste £8.00 on a ticket to people who deserve to know that:- Not all contemporary galleries are hopeless.



I would better advise curious people to go check out Adrian Wiards photojournalism exhibition @ the Karamel Club on until 27/07.  And it's FREE.  Becuase it's REAL.

http://www.karamelclub.co.uk/Festivals_detail.php?ID=128









* "Me, Me, Me", vs. the Artist, vs. the Curator, vs. no approval from the Artists shown

Turning 25 - Some issues I hold with that.

I spent last weekend at a friends wonderful wedding.  A friend who knows me well enough not to have put a 'plus-one' into my invite envelope.  I went as a single girl and just took it in my stride.  i.e.  Not getting totally trashed and sleeping with an attached groomsman.
I would have, but my mother was collecting me, just as she had dropped me of at the wedding event earlier that day - because I still have not leant to drive. 
Clearly, not having a stud-of-a-boyfriend to accompany me was the least of my problems.

So I thought - perhaps I can do a bucket-list for the things I have not completed to do out of my agenda as a child.  So follows...

1. CAREER (Downgrading to a job)
To be fair, I never really wanted one.  Because by my 25th birthday, I would have already sold a couple of excellent paintings, and been living-off the proceeds from that, whilst ducking in-and-out of editing my commercially-succesful art/fashion magazine - 'Ad-verse' or something.
No problem.  An outstanding History of Art degree from a decent University and subsequent established art schools made it very easy for me to achieve this.

(Semi-ironic re. Harry Styles.  Obviously age is a factor.  An X-Factor to be precise )

2. PERFECT BOYFRIEND; VERY KEEN TO MARRY ME.
I met him when I was darting to a gallery PV back when I was 23 and had just had my Saatchi sales in the bag.
Not for me the erratic, innappropriately aged or badly-dressed men to waste time on.  By now, I hadn't even had a broken heart.
HE has a wonderful job in a charitable company and a double-barrelled surname.
I would say yes to his not infrequent and extravagantly-staged marriage proposals but I'm moving to Paris next year and am very busy with launching my fashion-line at the moment.

3.HOME
You wouldn't see me bewildered by the amount of people in any IKEA store trying to write down boringly bland shelving-units using a pencil the size of my thumb on a Saturday. 
I got a successful interior designer chum of mine to set-up a mood-board specifying all angles of a Feng-Shui ideal, Therravadan-buddhist-inspired layout in my Chelsea-Harbour apartment. 

(Fun as long as they are somebody elses)

I know that sometimes my dinner-party guests are intimidated by this display of taste and beauty  but it is simply so important that myself and Harry my personal assistant with a background in modelling, are comfortable when we have the time to stay here.
I have a policy of cleansing my flat from bad omens once a month, and the only slight hassle is that the timbler flooring occasionally needs to be polished. 

4. FAMILY
People constantly tell me (my staff as well!) that Hugo and I would have such gloriously attractive children.
That may be, howeever,   my lean and supple body is not quite ready for taking that 9 month time-out as of yet.  A lot of the intricate positions I manage to urge it into during my weekly bikram yoga sessions being one simple example.
So I do have to be careful baring in mind mine and Hugo's regular and healthy sex-life. 
One charitable initiative Hugo project-managed at work was putting the Karma-Sutra into a concisetweet-format.  It proved a financially succesful app on the iPhone.





Re-Adrressing the balance;

1. CAREER (Downgraded to job)
5 years of working in various nefarious or 'cool' galleries in London, still orbiting an overdraft.  Brief horrific step into estate-agencies, intermittantly surviving on bar jobs.  End result = Those golden laurels of a admin.  A position with a media company as 'Senior Receptionist'.  I did say 'Senior' didn't I?

2. PERFECT BOYFRIEND, VERY KEEN TO MARRY ME.
It's probably enough to say on this one that I used to go out with a guy who was 14 when I was born and made delights such as tomato-ketchup on toast for me for my breakfast.  Ticked-off the list is - banker, surfer, artist, set-designer with token brick lane warehouse, semi-famed mediocre band member and all regrettable stages in between.  A lot of frogs.  A couple of newts.

3. HOME
Tick-list - flat in fulham broadway, squatting in Marylebone penthouse, live-work art studio in East London (Chemical paint fumes and skin-care don't match), invading friends in Bermondsey then relatives in Barned. 
Then surrendering to a place in Zone 3 where the sink doesn't work and we don't have no dishwasher.
But we have a garden, so, whatever.

4. FAMILY
Baring in mind my parenting skills are learnt from MTV's Teen Mom 1 + 2, this one is a fair-way-off.
Specific life decision recently made of saving this little gem for when I'm 28.  And when I have learnt substantially more skills in tricking a male into a relationship.
The lack of sex-life is helping on this one.  Yep, this one can probably take care of itself.  Which is also to be said for the kid, hopefully.

SUMMARY
Turning 25 is probably done with a lot more class by a lot more people.  Luckily having chosen friends on average older than myself, I can still be referred to as 'A Baby'.  That was not a cynical choice I made subconsciously.  Having a smoking habit and wrinkles to prive this, by my looks I'm very lucky people don't assume it to be the Harvey-Wallbanger thirtieth I am celebrating in three weeks time. 
I still get ID'ed by various bouncers hoping I don't have a 'pass-in', as I don't usually because I lost my passport a while back and haven't even cancelled it with the Home Office, let alone have the personal admin stamina to order a new one.

The only perfect things about turning 25 this year, will be the huge amount of relief it might be fun.  And the general assurance that because I am so crap generally, but still have great mates nonetheless, it might still be OKAY.  Judging from everyone elses opionions, they are probably a bit crap too. 

Lovely x