I have 4,050 followers on Tumblr, 967 friends on a Myspace account I never check anymore and 734 friends on Facebook.  I have plenty of friends, or at least that’s what I tell myself.  Groups of people from my school meet up at the MetroCentre every weekend, but I hardly ever go.  When I don’t turn up, they all wonder where I am.  When I do, they wonder the same thing.

I don’t cry at the funeral.  As they laid her in the ground, tears streamed down everyone’s faces, but mine was dry, like a bone.  I’m wearing black and staring at my shoes, wishing I hadn’t worn the ones with bows on.  A gust of wind makes me shiver and I cross my arms, wrapping my hands up in folds of the cardigan.  This is the most austere outfit I’ve worn in three years, and when I looked in the mirror this morning I realised I actually much prefer it to the things I usually wear.  Sorry, I always end up making things about me.  My Dad is crying, something I’ve only seen twice before.  The first time was when Mum left us, and the second time was when someone broke his nose in a boxing match.  There was blood everywhere, like a big fountain that reached all the way up to the rusty lamp hanging above the ring.  Just like I did those other times, I wish I could say something that would make him stop.  I break down when we get to the wake.  I manage to make it up the stairs and into the bathroom before I start crying and I turn on the cold tap to drown out the noise of my sobs.  My grandmother’s headstone tells the world that she was a loving mother, grandmother, friend.  If I died today, I think mine would be blank.

Still snuffling and hyperventilating slightly, I look into the mirror.  My eyes are puffy and my mascara has run down my face.  The bags under my eyes look worse than ever.  I notice that my makeup is patchy on my cheeks and my lipstick is smeared, and a line from a song by my favourite band pops into my head; ‘we never are what we intend or invent.’  I wish they could all see me now, then they’d know that this is who I am.  I am not Mac, or Dior, or Ugg, or Hollister.  I am Sophie.

I’ve tried to stop all of it – the anger, the negativity, the hatred.  But I’m not strong enough to do it on my own.  I need someone, but as soon I have someone I start to think that they’ll leave.  That feeling doesn’t stop until they do.  I know I have to make myself stronger in my head, but there’s no gym for stuff like that.  I wish I still wore glasses instead of these stupid contacts – I used to like looking at the world through my glasses and pretending I was watching television, and that everything bad that happened to me was happening to somebody else.  I used to have to pretend I was watching television a lot.  I think that’s why I talk so much – on television there are no awkward silences. Silence is too expensive.  If there were silences, people would get bored and change the channel.  Sometimes I wish I could change the channel.

Once in a while I am overwhelmed by pride and love, but not often enough.  The inside of my head is a motorway; always jammed, never empty.  I wish it was a bridge over a river, or that something that moves but isn’t a road.  Roads are too busy, and noisy, and they make my head hurt.  I wish I could draw, and sing, and love with all of myself, instead of holding everything back, thinking ‘what if I’m not good enough?’ I don’t care what it says on my headstone, as long as the gist of it is I mattered.

I have plenty of people who know me.  I have slept with plenty of boys.  I have plenty of nice things.  But nobody knows me, and I can’t remember the last time I laughed.

It was only after booking a ticket to The Only Way Is Blogging that I discovered the event is primarily aimed at fashion and beauty bloggers. And that tends to mean girls, and lots of ‘em. A sea of oestrogen! However much I love Legally Blonde (and I really do), it’s no secret that I’m not exactly TOWIB’s target market. Still, never one to shy away from something a bit different I decided to attend anyway. And this is what happened…

Blogger Bonding Session
I totally get what they were trying to do here; the mention of prizes was all about appealing to people’s competitive nature. People who are a little shy are more likely to gather URLs with that goal in place, and people who are very shy will be approached by people looking to bump up their numbers. Is the system perfect? No, it resulted in frantic, fleeting conversations. But so does speed dating. The point of both is not to have drawn out conversations, but to make potential connections that you may or may not strengthen after the event.

PR Panel
I appreciate that this may not have been relevant to some people, but for those occasionally approached by PR agencies and magazines it’s interesting to know where they might have been found and why they are considered noteworthy. Incidentally, I set up a Bloglovin’ as a result of discussion that emerged from the panel (ahem, it’s on the right if you’re keen) and also added myself to the UK bloggers map. I also found the members of the panel incredibly receptive to questions and comments, which really impressed me.

Ebuzzing
I’m fully aware that this is a contentious issue; the idea of using a blog to make money is one that some people aren’t happy with, and that’s just who they are. However, with services like Ad.ly already in place for celebrities, generating an (extra) income from one’s personal brand is becoming increasingly common; Zooey Deschanel frequently promotes her Hello Giggles blog, Ashton Kutcher managed to plug startups he has invested in on Two and a Half Men etc etc. I know there was some discussion (read: argument) about whether or not it was immoral to place a completely positive post disguised as your opinion. HOWEVER, and this is something I think is key, it’s worth remembering that the subject was sponsored posts, not being sent sample products.

In the past,  I have been sent samples (mostly books) with the understanding that I should be completely honest about them. If, however, I was paid to promote a product it would have to be something I was either already intending to purchase or suspect that I would enjoy using. As soon as money changes hands, this has become a business transaction; to put it another way, a job. If someone who worked at McDonald’s spent all day telling the customers how awful they think the food is they wouldn’t last five minutes.

SEO
For those who didn’t find the first part of the Ebuzzing talk relevant, whether it due to the fact that they didn’t want to do sponsored posts or the fact that their blog doesn’t get enough traffic, surely everyone got some useful tips from the second part of the talk? Yes, the speakers were a little clumsy (likely due to the fact that a member of their team due to give parts of the talk was absent), but I came away with notes to do things like rename my images to keywords, be more objective, write with authority, tailor the writing that accompanies my URL in search results and avoid puns. And I’m already noticing more traffic based on the changes I’ve made thus far. Nothing mind-blowing, but every little helps, right?

Other
The networking aspect of the day shone for me; it’s always interesting to get that many people interesting in the same things in a room. I appreciate that I’m something of a unique case, but as well as finding a couple of people who I’m planning to meet up with again, I also got a couple of leads on doing some freelance work  and a huge amount of new blogs/tweeters to check out. Very disappointing that some people have criticised Hayley for chiming in during talks and being ‘too involved’ – TOWIB is her baby after all, and it’s obvious that this stemmed from anxiety that people wouldn’t have a good time or understand the topics of discussion.

No, this is not a sponsored post (lol). Yes, I was very hungry, but we did only pay a fiver. No, I didn’t think the event was perfect. Yes, some girls clearly thought I was just there to get into their pants (I wasn’t). Overall, though, my first experience of TOWIB is that it was a pleasant way to pass an afternoon. Mind you, I left before they brought the wigs out. Electric blue is so not my colour.

First off, both deal with a character who is widely acknowledged to be the ‘chosen one’. Except neither of them actually are. Every time a slayer dies a new one is summoned, making being the ‘chosen one’ much more fluid than it initially seems. Kinda like how Neville Longbottom could also have been the chosen one.

A socially awkward redhead from a quintessentially Jewish family who becomes romantically involved with the ‘other best friend’. Wait, which one am I talking about? (Fine, Ron isn’t actually Jewish but his big family with overprotective, caring mother is surely the wizarding equivalent…)

Meth, not even once.

Do I even need to explain this one…?

So they’re both set predominantly in a school, ok, as is a lot of other stuff. Except…

…both of those schools are built on grounds that are plagued by unusual problems, be they from a forbidden forest or a hellmouth.

Let’s not forget the over-reliance on seven inch long bits of wood. Which you can (apparently…) charge £30 for collectible versions of if you stick them in a nice box.

Still, at least they’ve both always got a bespectacled, intelligent professor to turn to. Who both happen to look an awful lot like respected British actors.

Of course, a self hating werewolf who chains himself up to avoid attacking anyone always livens things up. Especially if they avoid romantic involvement with another key figure in the story for fear of injuring them. I also thought there was a Sirius (not technically a werewolf, I know) comparison to be had here, as I vaguely remembered Oz riding a motorbike. But Googling ‘werewolf on a motorbike’ just tended to turn up stuff like this…

Damn you, Taylor Lautner.

I’m sure there’s plenty more, I certainly intend to keep thinking. In the mean time, it’s worth mentioning that there are seven seasons of Buffy and seven Harry Potter books, and that both deal with overarching themes of friendship, magic and the supernatural. But then again I guess a lot of teenage fantasy/drama does. And it’s not as if they both contain main characters named after plants. Oh…

Just a picture of a Peony 'Hermione' flower and a Willow tree.

We arrived at the restaurant at 7pm on a Thursday to find a queue of around 50 people, which took an hour or so to clear. This wouldn’t have been so painful if the queue hadn’t been full of hipper-than-thou douchebags looking at each other’s trashed shoes and trying to decide who was the most boho. The very air was thick with breathy murmurings about new underground German techno nights and places to get the deepest V-necks known to man. But that was fine, I’d expected all this.

On entering the restaurant, it was much smaller than I expected. I had been hoping for a pseudo-derelict Gotham City-esque ballroom (note to restaurateurs – build this, and I will come every night.) but instead found a large bar whose decorators seemed to have used Charles Manson’s Tumblr for inspiration. Still, I get what they’re trying to do and it works, especially alongside the eclectic musical mix of bass heavy tracks by artists like Kele Okereke and Joy Division.

We ordered our food – wings, bacon cheeseburger, dead hippie (a double patty burger) and fries to share. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. Everyone else’s food was arriving, so we questioned whether the order had gone through. It hadn’t, and another waitress offered us cocktails on the house. We went for a Donkey Punch (lol), a fizzy gingery concoction, and a Mai Tai that were both amazing. Like ‘The Savoy’s American Bar amazing’.

A generous helping of wings eventually arrived (though they still took about fifteen minutes after we lodged our complaint) and they were…fine. I don’t see how people can go wrong with wings, but these were far too dry for me. Still, I was just glad enough that our food was on its way. Or was it? Around an hour later, we had to complain again (hello, more free cocktails) and it quickly became apparent that the order for our burgers hadn’t gone through. Fantastic.

Another half an hour later, our burgers arrived in the hands of an extremely apologetic waitress (not our original waitress, who seemed to be avoiding us…) who told us that our entire meal was being comped, which was nice. Again, the fries were…fine. I regret not going for the jalapeno covered chilli cheese fries, because what I got was only just better than McDonald’s fries. Mind you, I do like McDonald’s fries. The burgers were admittedly pretty good, but no better than a great diner burger. After waiting around for three and a half hours, I expected a lot better than a great diner burger. About three bites in, I realised that I wasn’t even really hungry anymore. Hunger had tagged out and gone home, and that feeling in my stomach was now just disappointment. We left the restaurant close to midnight in a haze of more apologies. Although not one of them came from our original waitress.

Ok, I get it – apparently it’s now ‘cool’ not to offer reservations. But if you insist on doing that, at least make sure that every customer receives service that’s efficient, lightning fast and friendly beyond belief. The service we received (from our original waitress, at least) was none of these things. Sorry I’m not toe-ing the party line and raving on Twitter about how amazing Meatliquor is, but it’s really not all that. It’s just…fine. Try the Hard Rock Cafe instead; fewer hipsters and you might get home before midnight.

‘Are you gay?’ is the first question a girl in a flowery dress at the bar asks me only a couple of minutes after I get into G-A-Y at Heaven. ‘What do you think?’ I reply. She pauses and looks around at the throngs of sweaty (some already shirtless) men before answering ‘You don’t look very gay.’ I tell her that I’m not, and she says ‘So what are you doing here?’ And it’s a good question. This is my second time at G-A-Y, having come down to see Janet Devlin just a couple of weeks ago. Last time I came down with an old friend, but this time I’ve ended up here on my own. And it’s totally surreal.

The cheering is deafening when the band finally come on stage, though a few do people leave the dancefloor muttering about how they’re ‘like so cringe’. Something that didn’t always come across on the live shows is just how much energy the band has – they bounce around like a bunch of five year olds who’ve just been told they’re going to Disneyworld. Being in the same room really does intensify their qualities; Perrie’s huge voice seems even stronger, Jesy and Leigh-Anne seem even sassier and Jade is even more utterly adorable.

Even more amazing is how smooth the band seems already – they open with the sublime Don’t Let Go, already their signature song, which feels like it could have been written for them. They then break straight into club anthems Don’t Stop the Music and Super Bass, the latter of which Jade introduces – ‘apparently it’s funny when you say it in a Geordie accent, so next we’re goin’ to play Soopa Bass.’ The group already move completely in sync, and their vocal harmonies are only getting more polished. This is nowhere more evident than in their final song, which is (of course) their first number one single, Cannonball.

One of the most striking things about the evening is the cross section of the fanbase it reveals – as well as the gay twentysomething guys and straight teenage girls dancing and cheering, I also spot thirty something drag queens, mothers out with their daughters and the odd straight guy who has been totally swept up by the experience (though I bet a lot of them will still insist that they hated it and their girlfriends dragged them along). I could make a lame pun about there being a great ‘little mix’ of people right now…am I better than that? Clearly not.

‘God, this place is going downhill,’ slurs a bleached blonde skinny guy at the bar. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask him. “They used to play Patrick Wolf and Robyn, now it’s just X Factor and whatever other over produced commercial shit they can find.” I cautiously tell him that I only came down to see Little Mix and the expression on his face mirrors the groups of guys who retreated to the bar as soon as Little Mix came onstage. “Well, each to their own, I guess. But they’re far too kitsch for me.” And with the revelation that my new favourite band is too camp for a gay guy wearing a Madonna t-shirt ringing in my ears, I order a bottle of water and jump in a taxi home.

If there’s one thing Chuck Palahniuk knows, it’s the grotesque.  From Big Bob’s sweaty bitch tits to…well, pretty much all of Haunted, Palahniuk knows how to make readers squirm.  As expected, there is an element of this in Damned’s descriptions of Hell and its inhabitants – “the denizens of Hades, they flail and cower, shake fists at the flaming sky, pound their heads into the iron bars until their blood blinds them”  And yet, Palahniuk seems to insist that it is human instinct, rather than anything supernatural, that leaves people truly damned - ‘In Hell, it’s our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us.’

If you come expecting the visceral, aberrant prose of Guts, you may find yourself disappointed.  However, you may find yourself enjoying what I enjoyed most about Damned; it’s actually pretty funny.   Demons complaining about internet speed and Hell’s large screen playing The English Patient on repeat are just two examples of moments that made me smirk.  But there are also some wonderful moments that make so much sense, you wonder why no-one has ever thought of them before.  Here I’m thinking particularly of Madison’s description of “those websites which everyone assumes are in Russia or Burma, where naked men and women stare unflinchingly into the webcams, a dazed look in their glassy eyes…”  How could we have ever thought that these people lived anywhere but Hell?

The narrator, Madison, is a complex creation.  For the first few chapters, I wasn’t a fan, but as the novel progressed I began to warm to her.  I have no doubt that using a thirteen year old girl as the central figure will inspire some (pointless) debate about whether Palahniuk is trying to poison today’s youth.  Snore.  Of course, Damned argues that today’s youth, as well as its old, are already poisoned – “Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.”  As with most novels about that whole elusive ‘human experience’ thing, we’re left with just as many questions as answers – is life (and the afterlife) really what we make it?  Or are we all damned, as the novel suggests, by the age of five?  Well, maybe we’ll find out in the sequel.

Oh, and my favourite line? “I ask Emily what it’s like to have AIDS. Even over the phone, her eye roll is audible. ‘It’s like being Canadian,’ she says. ‘You get used to it.’”

I don’t really do star ratings, but I will say that this is probably going to divide audiences.  I can’t see anyone losing their Palahniuk virginity with anything other than Fight Club, but this would be an interesting way to do it.  I sense that a lot of Palahniuk vets will argue that this is subversive fiction watered down to cater to the very people it spends much of its time ridiculing.  For everyone else this is an easy, but sometimes thought provoking, read that’s difficult not to enjoy.  Oh, side note, the hardback is going to come with dust jackets designed to look and feel like human skin…

I know, I know, I haven’t blogged in ages. I promise I have some cool stuff coming up soon to make up for it.  Like this, for example - http://firstandforever.drm​artens.co.uk/competitions - go try to win some free tickets to this three night festival at Barfly.  There’s something for everyone – Kids who listen to too much Joy Division; you’ll probably enjoy British Sea Power, hipsters who listen to ‘old Alexisonfire’ and first pressings of The Number Twelve Looks Like You; Rolo Tomassi, and twentysomethings with flicky fringes who have a lot (too many.) band t-shirts; The Blackout.  If you don’t fit into one of those categories, I’m not sure how you found my blog.

And in case you’re like ‘oh, but I never win anything!’ (whinge.) there’s a bunch of free gigs listed there too – all the bands sound like they should be on the Topman soundtrack, and they’ll probably be the next Mumford & Sons or Two Door Cinema Club or whatever so you should see them now before they get big.  Except Hawk Eyes (formerly Chickenhawk), who sound like they should be on Jackass or a skateboarding video game soundtrack.  In a good way.

Dismount at King’s Cross, Platform 9 3/4 (even though it says 5 on the sign…)

This looks familiar…except they act like it’s the exterior of King’s Cross in the movies, even though it’s really St Pancras.

Still St Pancras. Ok, let’s get the Underground to Monument.

A short walk from Monument is Leadenhall Market, used as the first Diagon Alley! Hagrid and Harry not pictured.

42 Bull’s Head Passage – This was the first Leaky Cauldron, but now it’s an optician’s. How unbelievably depressing. If I come across some money I’ll totally buy it, make a theme bar and name cocktails after the characters. (Don’t hold your breath.)

 Cross London Bridge and you’ll see this – remember them flying past all that stuff on their broomsticks?…

…and you’ll also come to Borough Market where (at 7 Stoney Street) you’ll find Leaky Cauldron Number II. Now it’s a flower shop. I hope you can buy ‘Harry Potted plants’ and ‘Dumbledore Dahlias’ but I didn’t check.

If you stroll down the bank of the Thames, you’ll reach Millennium Bridge. At least where it used to be until the Death Eaters destroyed it.

Oh no, wait there it is. Ok, cross it, and head right to Mansion House Underground station.  Take it to Westminster…

These are the Westminster ticket gates that gave Mr Weasley some trouble.  There was a load of Chinese people having trouble with them the day I went.  They didn’t look like wizards though.

It’s a bit of a hike to Lambeth Bridge, to be honest, but if you want to see the place where the Knight Bus went really narrow…this is it! You also get to walk past the Houses of Parliament if you want a bit of non-Harry Potter related culture. IF.

 To the Ministry of Magic – guess you’ll have to take these since…

 …the phone-booth entrance (located  in Scotland place) is gone I blame that Colin Farrell movie.

 From there, get the Underground from Embankment to Leicester Square which is pretty close to Shaftesbury Avenue.  This is where the gang head to in Deathly Hallows Part 1 before getting attacked by Death Eaters in a cafe.  I wanted to go in to do some sort of elaborate trick where I made my coffee cup float using a piece of string, but the cafe isn’t even real, hmph.

It’s an easy walk from there to Holborn Underground station, which is pretty close to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I know it looks totally different, but Lincoln’s Inn Fields was the filming location for 12 Grimmauld Place. There were a bunch of dogs running around in the park when I was there, but none of them responded to the name Sirius.

Back to Holborn, and it’s only a couple of stops back to King’s Cross! I constructed this tour a couple of weeks ago, and it only took me a few hours to do (with a mixture of walking and getting the Underground between locations). Two things really struck me – the first was how much things had changed in the decade since shooting started on the first movie; parts of King’s Cross used in the original are totally gone, and Lincoln’s Inn Field is pretty hard to recognise as Grimmauld Place. The second is how spread out everything is – so much kit is used on film shoots, it must have been a nightmare moving it all over London. Then again, I did go see locations used in all eight films in one day…

That’s it for today, though I do view this post as a work in progress (I haven’t even spell-checked it…and that’s an unintentional pun) – I want to add a map with the route I took on it at some point and comparison shots with stills from the movie. Oh, I also have a bunch from another Harry Potter related trip I’ll be posting soon…!

Until then, knock yourself out with the higher quality images of my day out from my Flickr!