On Victoria Wood

She was female. She was funny. She was Northern.

I am at least two of those things (though we hail from different parts of the North), and I take a regular stab at the third.

I have distinct memories of seeing her on TV when I was younger. The repeats of Dinnerladies and her stand-up shows were always on UKTV Gold, which in turn was always on in our house. I watched her and watched my parents laugh at her, a northern female comedian was well-loved by everyone in my family.

This made a difference, to me at least. She sounded like I did and like the women I encountered every day. She was funny and unapologetic about it, just like they were. I never once thought about what she looked like. I didn't give a tiny hoot about whether she was beautiful or she dressed well or her make-up looked nice. To me she was lightning sharp, and intelligent, and obviously very ambitious and dedicated to her craft. I watched her at about the age people started to call me funny, and at that age I cared much more about that than anyone calling me pretty.

The way I felt about her was the way I felt about myself. It was the way I wanted other people to feel about me too, that everything I was would be more important than how I looked and my accent didn't mean I couldn't be successful and respected.

I got a short sharp shock when I realised that both my looks and my accent would be very regularly up for discussion. Victoria Wood was one element of a wonderful, confidence-building childhood which left me completely unprepared to be considered 'ugly' and have my accent ridiculed on the daily later in my life. I lost sight for at least 7 or 8 years of what she had taught me:

That I was worthy of whatever I wanted even if I didn't meet the standards of people who had a very narrow definition of what was 'attractive' and 'appealing'. That it was okay to be unashamedly loud.

I feel that way now, again. Although I had honestly forgotten what a huge part of that feeling she had been until the news of her passing away came through last week. 

She meant that I didn't even comprehend the reasons why people would say women couldn't be funny - because how could this be true when I had seen it so frequently? Not just that, she was funny like the women I knew were funny, the way everyday people can time things so perfectly and not many people can replicate.

Hearing her standing on stages in front of hundreds of people, on TV, adored by everyone, meant I didn't link my non-RP accent to the likelihood of my success - her vowels sounded like my vowels so if she could be successful in the arts, then why couldn't I?

More than any of that, she brought laughter to our house. She made me feel like making people laugh was the most wonderful thing you could do, I'm still convinced that's true.

Thank you Victoria, you will be so very missed.

One Month in Amman

I have found being uncomfortably honest on the internet to be the single best insight into how wonderful people can be. Including people who I would not necessarily expect support from (because I feel that they do not owe me anything, not because they are not wonderful supportive people in their own right). So this update starts with a thank you. Thank you for making me feel less alone, and checking in on me, and reminding me that just being here is immensely brave so I can stop sweating the life organisation stuff and just marvel at my own achievements for a little while.

You want to know how I'm doing (hopefully) and I want to tell you.

I have friends. Proper friends, close friends, who I spend my evenings with and tell my feelings to and make plans for my birthday with. I am very lucky.

I go to yoga. I eat well and enough, I've had a lot of good food. I get to sleep before midnight (usually). I smile a lot and laugh even more. I'm learning Arabic. I have time to keep my side hustles going and I'm working to keep everything moving forward. I have my visa, and anyone who knows me will know that I was convinced this process would be an endless struggle and it turns out actually I could totally handle it.

I have seen some of the country and I have plans to see places nearby and go on trips and I will make sure I pack as much I can into the time I have here. I will also make sure I give myself time to rest and be and remember that my life does not have to be a permanent travel diary, I do live and work here, after all.

But just because this great adventure has turned into a wonderfully stable life in which I feel settled doesn't mean I don't also have some bad days. Days where I wish I could just get on the 11A bus and go home and sit in bed and watch TV all evening. Like the day I text my friend these complaints about the cats on my street:

The laughter was deserved. I do get stared at a lot, but then I am pretty noticeable. I was having a very bad day and I'm not usually driven to getting angry at cats on the street just because people look at me when I go outside. Also please ignore the auto-correction I was still walking at the time because this information needed to be passed on immediately. 

I don't really feel lonely. I don't know whether that's surprising or not. I suppose I don't really have time to, I value time on my own and I work on things I care a lot about and mostly I feel like I don't spend enough time on anything.

Jordan is different of course. I don't know how to tell you how other than to sound like a patronising bitch and say 'well, it's not Leeds'. Jordan is different but I am here and I was not running from anything, so I have not left my life behind as much as I now have to carry it out remotely.

I don't really experience my days any differently to the way I did at home. I'm trying to make friends and navigate a lot of new ways of doing things but I am who I was before and I do not intend to make huge adjustments to that. The 'shock' in culture shock suggests that I would not expect it to be so different to home. I did expect it to be different and it was, so I am not shocked. Everything is new but everything has been new before and I am much more confident in my ability to deal with it than I ever have been.

I am happy and settled and I've made enough mistakes before to not make them again. There will always be good times and bad times but as someone who had a very extensive period of bad times I feel that I can at least begin to be excited about what the next year will bring. I'm trying to stop being so convinced that something terrible is about to happen just because this feeling of peace and well-being has been so alien to me before.

A Love Letter to my Teenage Self

When I wrote about coming here I did a post called 'True Girl Power' in which I talked about the women who made me who I am. I included myself in that list because feminism and loving women starts at home. I talked about making teenage Claire proud because she had a rough time, and largely hated herself and wasn't brave or strong or anything but just trying to survive high school and get straighter hair.

Then I went through a box of things I keep to remind me of all the happiness and love I've been privileged to have and receive. it largely contains cards and notes and letters now because I make the effort to keep it in one box and I don't need to remember every activity I ever did but I do need to read those words sometimes. The majority of the best, and most detailed ones, date from about 2005-2008. I was just a teenager and I wanted to be popular and pretty and that was all really. I made a lot of very close friendships because I was lucky enough to go to a big school where you could be bullied consistently and simultaneously have loads of friends.

We wrote each other a lot of long detailed cards and letters, sometimes for no occasion at all. We loved each other so intimately and fully and I learnt everything about being emotionally open and what real friendship looks like in those years.

These letters though, they use the words 'brave' and 'strong' and 'confident'. Words I would probably never use to describe myself at age 15. I can't even imagine what I would have been doing to prove this to anyone. How could this girl who desperately wanted everyone to like her, wanted to stand out so badly but also just more than anything just really wanted to be pretty, could possibly have done to be considered brave or strong? Someone was lying. It wasn't my friends who knew me so well, and loved me so dearly then, and now. It was me, I had lied to myself my whole life. 

I would use those words now. The cards sat on my desk in Amman from my friends look much the same as they always did. Now I believe them because I live it, I've seen it, I am all of those things and I finally stopped worrying about being pretty. I have learnt that I am beautiful and that it also does not matter. 

2008.

* * * *

When I was in primary school I told one of my friends I didn't like her. Actually, I did this more than once. I tried to ditch friends I had nothing in common with, or I didn't feel comfortable around, all the time. Now we would call that self-care, and leaving toxic friendships, or just plain sensible management of our little spare time. In Year 6 I was just being disruptive and mean. When I explained my reasoning to other friends I used the same reasons I would use now. Now I share stories of leaving friendships and feel proud of the control I've taken of my life and deciding who deserves my time. When I was 11 this just made me a troublemaker and all-round pain in the teachers ass. 

When I was 15 my GCSE Maths teacher despised me. I was disruptive, surrounded by girls I had clicked with in a way that only happens once in a millennia. We were a complete nightmare. I was too loud and I didn't care and she told me I wasn't funny and I didn't really care about that either. I am both of those things, I hope I always am. It is my honest opinion that those are two of the boxes that women are told we should never tick, and I've been ticking them for a very, very long time. I remember being a good student because I had unrelenting respect for authority but the evidence would suggest I just got lucky with my other teachers and I had zero time for the ones who didn't want us to be individuals. 

All through high school I thought I could be friends with everyone, I didn't want to be a shrinking violet like not-very-good-looking girls with bad hair should be. I knew I could talk to everyone and I very near demanded public verification of this. I didn't get it. I was treated differently because I wasn't the right person but I remained wholly unable to accept it. Then people laughed at me behind my back (and to my face; the bullying could be pretty vicious). Now you better believe no one is laughing if they don't show me the respect I know I deserve. I knew I deserved it then, I just didn't know I had it in me to turn people away if they didn't show it.

I could also be a nasty little bitch. There I said it. I can be cutting now and I didn't develop this very niche skill overnight. When I look back through notes sent to my friends across the classroom, I see the people who bullied me being verbally decapitated. Some of it makes me wince. Boys who didn't want to date me also weren't safe and in that respect absolutely nothing has changed. I've always had a way with words, and I didn't always use it for good. These people did make my life hell, though. Now no one does that, but if they did I would say it to their face. I've been told fighting with me isn't pretty. You should hear what I said about that kid in who made fun of my bad skin in Year 10.

* * * *

Even rationally, the way I remember makes no sense. If I was so under confident then how could I have spent every year between the ages 7-17 on stage? If I was so weak and generally average personality wise, how did I keep so many of the friends I made as a teenager to this day? If I was so quiet and unable to speak up, where did this voice, that I use so frequently now, suddenly come from? You are who you always were, and you owe your past self for your present self's best qualities (and your worst).

I was always kind, and loving. I always appreciated friendship and gave my all to it. I was always smart. I have always been a writer. I have always known all of these things. The thing is though, is that if you're not making waves with some people, some of the time, you're almost definitely letting yourself be treated badly. 

I wrongly remember myself as a pushover who didn't care for herself, who let herself be bullied and pushed and pulled by people who were no good and didn't realise it. All that is true, bar the fact I didn't know it. Oh boy, did I know it, and teenage Claire was pushing and kicking back in the very limited ways she knew how and to the extent that she could without becoming a problem for the school and her parents. 

Now, I'm still saying much the same things, I just shout a little louder.

I'm heard more clearly and easily because I'm an adult and that by default makes my opinions more valid. I have a bigger platform and I give less of a shit who hears what I have to say. I give love just as freely, but I stand up for myself more frequently because I don't have to worry about someone telling me I don't know what's best for my well-being and threatening formal discipline if I don't agree. 

2015.

* * * *

We don't listen to teenagers when they tell us what they want and need. We think they don't know.

Maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if this overruling of teenagers wasn't a precursor to the larger message that women are wholly irrational for the rest of their lives too. 

Even in my own mind I feel like I've lurched between quiet and weak to strong and all-together too loud. I lived in a world that didn't take me seriously so I remember wrongly that I didn't have a voice, and wouldn't have known what to say anyway, and that was my fault. I didn't have a voice, that was because I wasn't allowed one. When I see teenage girls on Twitter complaining about people who are mean to them at school I don't see bitching. I see girls pushing back and calling out in the very rare spaces we're offered when the institutions we're part of tell us to be quiet in favour of creating a 'conflict-free' space. 

We don't love and respect school-age girls the same way we love and respect adult women because we remember our own teenage selves wrongly. We were filled with strength and bravery and confidence but we didn't exist in a situation where we could express it. We don't remember being that way because when we expressed it we were, by and large, told to stop because it was considered disruptive. Quiet teenage girls can grow to be adults with very loud voices once they realise they can finally be heard; we should take care of them until then. We should take them seriously when their voices do make it through; what they're saying is important.

The noise I was making was only low-level because I didn't have the tools to understand why I was being silenced. Now I understand, and I only make more noise in response. I didn't gain my voice overnight, I always knew what I had to say, now I can say it out loud. 

So here's to my teenage self, may I now remember her as she was, and as all teenage girls are: strong, brave, confident.