Is the Palace finally getting sassy with the Press?

It's been a long time since we saw a case of the famous cerca regna tonat that Thomas Wyatt captured with his poetry in the dark days of 1536. But today, for the first time in a long time, the Palace thundered. Saint James's Palace came out all guns blazing about the media's grotesque invasion of the Duchess of Cambridge's privacy, when a trashy French magazine Closer published illicitly-acquired photographs of the princess sunbathing topless whilst on a private holiday with her husband in Provence. The Palace is now taking legal action and the media conglomerate who own the Irish Daily Star, which also published the pictures, have hinted that they will withdraw all their funding from the newspaper - possibly forcing it to go out of circulation. At long last, it seems, hunting season on the House of Windsor is over.

But the question might justifiably be asked - why has it taken the Court so long to fight back against the media's often appalling treatment of the Royal Family? Forget all the ridiculous conspiracy theories about what happened in 1997, the true tragedy of what happened to Princess Diana was that she was chased to her death because the paparazzi wanted a photograph of her with her new boyfriend. The Duchess of York, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Prince of Wales have all found themselves victims of over-intrusive press attention and some of the things said, implied, published or revealed about them were achieved in such patently illegal or prurient ways that any other celebrity or public figure would have responded with a law suit. And yet, for over a century, the royals have done nothing - resulting in the old joke that you can say anything you like about the Royal Family because they're the one set of people who won't sue.

When she was first confronted with evidence of the libelles, the precursors to both pornography magazines and the lower-end tabloids, Marie-Antoinette simply refused to take them seriously. As far as she was concerned, they were nothing but trash written by trash; she failed to realise, until it was too late, the awful damage that these lies had done. That sublime royal self-confidence, and the refusal to acknowledge tawdry and seedy reality, has flowed inexorably from the mirrored halls of Versailles right the way down to the current incumbents of Buckingham Palace. To acknowledge something gives it credibility; therefore the best thing to do is to ignore it. The problem is, though, that it won't go away just because you want it to and, as Marie-Antoinette learned in 1789, when mud is flung, it usually leaves a stain - however undeserved. Whilst you can certainly over-egg the comparisons between Marie-Antoinette and Princess Diana, it's hard not to conclude that one thing they had in common was that they were both harried to their premature deaths by bad publicity. 

The House of Windsor's relationship with the press has never been very good and its strategy for handling its seedier elements has usually been as staggeringly incompetent as poor Marie-Antoinette's was. Royal distrust began in the late nineteenth century, when the aged Queen Victoria came under a barrage of criticism for her refusal to participate more in public life following the death of her husband, Prince Albert. Things took an even bigger nose-dive during the First World, in which a press frenzy endlessly harassed the royals about their German relatives, coerced the King into changing the royals' surname to the English-sounding "Windsor," cast aspersions on the King and Queen's loyalty to the war effort, endlessly criticised the Court  for being too uninspiring and helped panic the King into believing that he could not offer political asylum to his Tsarist relatives in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution - a decision which led to the Romanovs being trapped in Russia, where they were all horribly murdered by Communists in an extra-judicial massacre one year later. When Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (better known to our generation as the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) married into the Royal Family in 1923, she pleasantly gave an interview to an enterprising journalist who turned up on the doorstep of her family's London townhouse. The interview was essentially a fluff-piece, which complimented the soon-to-be-princess on her charm, grace and vivacity, but the King was not pleased on principle. He advised Elizabeth never, ever to talk to the press. No good could come of it. She obediently stuck to his advice for the next seventy-nine years of her public career and died as one of the most popular members of the Royal Family in history.

Speculation on Prince Philip's marital fidelity, lurid details of Prince Charles's romantic conversations with Camilla, photographs of the former Duchess of York caught in an indelicate pose with her "financial adviser," unsubstantiated and near-impossible aspersions cast on the paternity of Prince Harry, secret filming of the Countess of Wessex, the recent naked pictures of Prince Harry from a private hotel room in Las Vegas and the bugging of various royal servants, friends and confidantes, have understandably done nothing to assuage the Windsors' fundamental distrust of their country's media. Now, however, the tide seems to have turned - not just within the Palace, but with the wider population, too. There seems to be a general feeling that the tabloids' attitude to the Royal Family is dishonest and mercenary. The only real backlash when the naked photographs of Prince Harry were published earlier this month was against The Sun newspaper that published them. The public's sympathy for Harry, however, has been as nothing compared to the levels of anger being expressed at this week's topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge. The fact that British publications are not planning to show the pictures indicates that they know what the likely reaction would be.

On the one hand, this is a perfectly natural moral reaction to a young newlywed's embarrassment at being photographed whilst sunbathing topless, as millions of people do, with her husband. She was not posing, she was not on duty, there was no permission granted and her mortification can be imagined. There's also the fact that Catherine is very popular and people will naturally side with her, because they like her and she seems to be doing a good job. There was no such groundswell of support for the Duchess of York back in 1992. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Palace, like the People, may also have learned a hard lesson from what happened to Princess Diana. At some point, unwarranted intrusions into the Royal Family's day-to-day private lives has to stop, lest it claim another casualty.

But I can't help thinking that part of the reason for the Palace's new-found set of metaphorical cojones may be the Duchess herself. Like the late Queen Mother, who granted one press interview in 1923 and didn't make a habit of it, Catherine Middleton is extremely wary of giving too much away to the Press. Her style of dealing with them is much, much more like the Queen Mother's than it is like Diana's, to whom Catherine is often erroneously compared. Diana thought that she could "work" the Press and establish a mutually-beneficial relationship. It was that crashing miscalculation which led to the last few years of her life becoming  a game of cat-and-mouse misery. In contrast, Catherine gives little away. She doesn't do interviews and she isn't naturally drawn to the centre-stage, like Princess Diana was. Catherine, in a nutshell, does not want to be famous and she doesn't want to be the centre of attention. In many ways, despite her fame, she's the anti-celebrity. And like the late Queen Mother, I sense a commendable hint of steel behind the velvet of Catherine Middleton's smile. She is no doormat. When she was still Prince William's girlfriend, she sued a paparazzo for taking photographs of her without her permission. Very earlier on, she established a no-nonsense policy with the Press and she hasn't abandoned it now that she's married. 

It would be all too easy for Catherine Middleton to do what Marie-Antoinette did in the 1780s - ignore the bad press and just hope it goes away. But Catherine Middleton is not Marie-Antoinette, nor is she Princess Diana. She was not born into royalty and until 2011, she lived most of her life in the "real" world. She knows how much the media matters and she knows how far it will go to get what it wants. There comes a point where even a princess has to say enough; there comes a point in any person's life where rising above things quite simply won't cut it. Perpetually turning the other cheek is for saints; it's not for royalty. Sometimes you have to fight back and that, thank God, is what the House of Windsor is - at last - doing by suing over the smutty, nasty, silly and unnecessary photographs of a young woman sunbathing with her husband.

"It gets better": Texas city councilman gives an emotional speech about teen bullying and suicide

I am really pleased and excited to hopefully be visiting the Trevor Project during my visit to America in November to hear them speak about the appalling cases of suicide and bullying amongst the adolescent gay or lesbian population of the United States. It is a situation which is particularly important and personal to me, because I happen to be writing about it right now and while I am happily not writing a story that involves suicide or self-harm, it is certainly a difficult thing to write about, nonetheless.

Of course, all bullying - especially when it becomes merciless, unremitting or physical - is to be deplored; all of it is tragic. The rise of suicides amongst American teenagers who either are or perceived to be gay is something that indicates within that specific segment of the population, bullying is becoming an endemic problem - the current number of celebrities working with the Trevor Project include Daniel Radcliffe, Kathy Griffin, Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris, Jay Manuel and Anne Hathaway, amongst others. They are all seeking to speak directly to the victims and to convince them that it does get better. If only 13 year-old Asher Brown had known that, before he put his father's pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.

The current spate of suicides or attempted suicides amongst young girls who have been targeted by a sustained bullying campaign of intimidation, which began to include cellular phones, Facebook and MySpace, is another worrying - rather, horrifying - trend, as the recent case of the suicide of Irish transfer student, Phoebe Prince (15), shows all too well.

All children get teased - myself included. But, for it to reach the stage where suicide is contemplated suggests that schools are fundamentally failing in their duty of pastoral care and if they are failing because they personally don't approve of homosexuality and are therefore loathe to correct the bullies, then may God forgive them. I'm inclined to think, or hope, that the latter is not the case - I hope that these schools are lethally incompetent, rather than lethally cruel.

My heart goes out to these young adults and, in some cases, children and I am not one of those who has a sufficiently bleeding-heart to say that I also feel sorry for the bullies, too. I don't. I feel nothing but contempt and disgust and as un-Christian as it sounds, for those who have been responsible for these suicides - I hope they have to live with that guilt until the day they die. What they did was beyond reprehensible.

I came across this video on the blog It seems to me, run by the Director of Pastoral Events for the Marin Foundation, which is a Christian organisation. It is from a Texas city councilman called Joel Burns, who speaks movingly about the recent spate of suicides. It is a very emotional speech and I applaud the Councillor for feeling strongly enough about the issue to share so much of his thoughts and feelings.

For Councillor Burns's speech in Fort Worth, Texas, please click here.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine:

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

In memoria æterna erit iustus,

ab auditione mala non timebit...

In paradisum deducant te Angeli:

in tuo adventu suscipat te Martyres,

et perducant te in avitatem santam Ierusalem.

Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere

æternam habeas requiem.

Amen.

"The Fair Maid of Brabant": The Life of Adeliza of Louvain, Queen of England

“It has not been granted to you from Heaven that you should bear a child to the King of the English… Perhaps the Lord has closed up your womb.”
- Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours in a letter to Queen Adeliza

Appropriately enough, Adeliza of Louvain’s career as Queen of England started with a shipwreck. This one incident in the English Channel, which occurred months before she even set foot in England, was to radically alter Adeliza's position in her new country. Initially, the marriage between Adeliza of Louvain and the recently-widowed King Henry I of England was supposed to bring some comfort and distraction to the King following the death of his first wife, the powerful and respected Matilda of Scotland. On the surface, Adeliza seemed to fit the bill perfectly. She was young, charming, beautiful and well-connected. Her father owned sizable territories in modern-day France and Germany and her mother was a descendant of the great Emperor Charlemagne. So proverbial was Adeliza’s prettiness that she was nicknamed “the Fair Maid of Brabant” and her personality had won her praise at the Imperial court in Germany. The marriage contracts between King Henry and Adeliza’s father, Godfrey, were signed in the spring of 1120, six months before the shipping disaster that would shatter not only Adeliza’s future happiness but also the welfare of England for a generation.

The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott: Ireland, 1957

Irish journalist Tim Fanning has just published his new book The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott about a notorious sectarian dispute in Ireland in the late 1950s, concerning a Catholic father, his Protestant wife and their two young daughters. The events were previously dramatised in the controversial movie A Love Divided (1999) and Mr. Fanning’s well-reviewed book has re-ignited interest in the scandal which rocked Ireland - north and south - half a century ago. Having had the book recommended to me, I did some research into the original case and the story of the boycott is truly a fascinating one.

On a wet Saturday morning of April 1957 in the southern Irish town of Fethard-on-Sea in County Wexford, some local people spotted the family car of their neighbour, Sheila Cloney (30), accidentally backing into her own gatepost, before speeding off out of the town. In the back of the car were Mrs. Cloney’s two daughters – Eileen (6) and Mary (3). Their journey was the 176 miles to the Irish border with Northern Ireland.

When Sheila’s farmer husband, Seán, returned from work that evening, he was confused as to his wife and daughters’ whereabouts: he called over to Sheila’s parents, who lived nearby, but they had not seen her. Then, he visited her siblings, who also lived in the town – but, again, they had no idea where Sheila was and assumed that she had been at home with the children all day. Eventually, Seán reported Sheila, Eileen and Mary as missing to the Garda Síochona (the Irish police) and a search was started for the missing Cloneys.

At the age of thirty, there was nothing about Sheila Cloney that would have led anyone to think she would cause a scandal by fleeing her hometown without telling her husband or her parents. Like her husband Seán, Sheila had been born in Fethard-on-Sea, the daughter of a local cattle dealer and his wife. Along with the rest of her family, Sheila was raised as a member of Fethard-on-Sea’s small Protestant community – attending the local Church of Ireland, until she moved to Britain in her early 20s, finding work as a domestic servant in London shortly after the Second World War.

It was in London that she met her future husband, Seán Cloney, another inhabitant of Fethard-on-Sea, who had grown up on a farm one mile from Sheila’s and who had been over in England attending the funeral of an ex-pat relative in Suffolk. Hearing that a girl from back home was living nearby, Seán did as good Irish boys are supposed to and made the effort to go and call on her. Seán and Sheila began courting and fell in love, but because he was Catholic and she was Protestant, they decided to keep their budding relationship secret from their families back home in Ireland. When news leaked that Seán was “going” with a Protestant girl, his parish priest, Father William Stafford, retaliated by banning him from any of the Catholic recreational societies in the town – beginning by expelling Seán from the Catholic amateur dramatic society (the only society he had requested to join.) Deciding that if this was as bad as it was going to get they could probably learn to cope, Seán and Sheila were married in a civil ceremony at a registry office in London on October 8th 1949.

But Ireland being Ireland meant that news travelled fast and two months into their marriage, another parish priest was dispatched to track down the young couple and talk to them about the role Catholicism should play in their marriage. On the issue of converting to her husband’s faith, Sheila Cloney refused point-blank. Seeing that there would be no persuading her about joining the Catholic faith herself, the priest then asked if she would at least consider marrying Seán in a second ceremony – this time, a Catholic one – for the sake of her husband’s family back home. Sheila was reluctant even at this request, namely because doing so would require her to sign the Church’s Ne Temere decree, by which she promised to raise any children from the marriage as Roman Catholics, but Seán apparently assured her that even if she did sign the Ne Temere, any children they had together would have as much a Protestant upbringing as a Catholic one and when they reached maturity, they could decide for themselves which denomination to attend. Sheila signed, the Nuptial Mass was celebrated and, a few months later, Seán and Sheila Cloney returned to Fethard-on-Sea to live together as man and wife.

The problems in their marriage began a year later with the birth of their eldest daughter, Eileen. With Sheila still lying in recovery from the birth, the nuns who worked in the nursing home immediately took baby Eileen away to receive a Catholic baptism. Sheila was angry at this, although apparently accepted that the nuns had probably been doing it with the best intentions in the world and had been unaware of Mrs. Cloney's wishes on the matter. However, just to be sure, when she became pregnant again the following year, Sheila specifically requested that any child she had would not immediately be baptised a Catholic. A second daughter, Mary, was born in 1953 and, again, this time deliberating ignoring the mother’s wishes, the nuns took the child away to be christened by the local priest.

When it came to Catholicism, Sheila Cloney’s back was now well and truly up and she was worried over the fact that her husband Seán had not prevented the nuns in taking both of their daughters for baptism at the maternity home, despite his earlier promises about the children's religious upbringing. Between the baptism and the children beginning school, the issue simmered but as their eldest daughter, Eileen, reached the age of five, it once again reared its head - with a vengeance. Sheila feared that if Eileen was sent to the local Catholic school, all chances of her being able to make up her own mind when she was older would be gone, since on top of receiving a Catholic baptism, she would also receive a Catholic education, which would entail going through First Holy Communion and Confirmation, as part of the school ethos. On the surface at least, Seán Cloney agreed with his wife that this would be a step too far and for a few months, they debated what exactly to do about Eileen’s education. Aside from the religious issue, Sheila Cloney was also in favour of home schooling for children and she wanted this system of education for her children.

Mean Girls (2004)

“I know she's kind of socially retarded and weird, but she's my friend... so, just promise me you won't make fun of her!”
- Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Mean Girls (2004)

Unlike most other movies in its genre, Mean Girls isn’t about some faux-ugly teenage girl who, with the help of a hardened jock who falls inexplicably in love with her once he gets bored of dating the cheerleaders, suddenly becomes beautiful, radiant and beloved, all the while simultaneously and paradoxically proving that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Instead, Mean Girls is a tongue-in-cheek comedy-drama about a 16 year-old girl called Cady (Lindsay Lohan), the child of two travelling academics, who is about to go to an American public high school for the first time.

There, clueless, plaid-wearing Cady is befriended by the indie kids, Janis and Damien (Lizzie Caplan and Daniel Franzese), who explain to her how the pecking order at North Shore High works. However, since she is a “regulation hotty,” Cady soon attracts the notice of North Shore’s manipulative Queen Bee, Regina George (played superbly by Rachel McAdams.) Spurred on by her indie friends, who want Cady to gather information on “the Plastics,” so they can laugh together later about the popular girls inane lifestyle, Cady reluctantly begins to eat lunch with at Regina’s table, hang-out with them and, bit by bit, she becomes sucked into the intoxicating, gossip-riddled world of the teen it-crowd – including falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, school sexpot Aaron Samuels, (Jonathan Bennett) and stirring up trouble between Regina and her brilliantly played sidekicks - “totally rich” Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) and “the dumbest girl you will ever meet,” Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried.)

Now, I absolutely love Mean Girls – unsurprising, I know. Yes, I hate the ending, but then, who doesn’t? But long before Tina Fey was famous for her side-splittingly hilarious impersonations of Vice-Presidential contender, Sarah Palin, on Saturday Night Live ,she was critically acclaimed for writing this funny, bitchy exposé of high school cliques and popularity contests. (She also plays the schools Maths teacher, Miss Norbury.) Sadly and probably quite dysfunctionally, Mean Girls makes me miss school and the glory days of secret house parties, sexuality panics, dress code fears, crash dieting, needlessly overcomplicated scheming and the endless deliciousness of being slightly ridiculous on a daily basis – oh... to be 17 again. Also, another very good movie. (See what I did there?)

Happy Birthday, Aisleagh

"Are you frightfully cross?"
"No. Just a little hungry."

Aisleagh M. and I did not have the greatest starts to a friendship. We first met each other within a few weeks of starting at Down High, when I was a podgy scarf-wearing 1st year with a "posh" accent and Aisleagh sported enormous glasses and a cow's lick. Things took a turn for the worse when, one day outside Music class, her best friend Grace's contact lense flipped inwards, Grace crumpled to the ground in pain and her eye turned beetroot red. "Good," I said, as I swept past her agony-wracked body. Aisleagh heard and wasn't pleased. (I can't remember why Grace and I had turned on each other - I think it was something to with Home Ec.) Finally, on a History trip to France, Aisleagh poisoned me by tipping a mountain of salt into my glass at supper one evening. I didn't notice, drank it and accidentally smashed the stem of the glass in my fury when I set it down.

The turning point came in 4th year, when we were both in Miss Gorman's GCSE English Lit class. For some reason, we ended-up sitting beside each other for the first half of the year and fell into conversation about how much we hated some other people in our year. And from that spite, a beautiful friendship was born.

Together, it must be said, that Aisleagh and I didn't always bring out the best in one other. One sweltering summer day, along with our friends Grace and Thomas, we went to Saul for a picnic, near Saint Patrick's Mount. OK - on it. However, since it was so close to Marching Season not a lot of places were open because of the holiday, so supplies were limited. OK - again, that's a lie: we'd eaten everything by the time we got there.

After a few hours, the heat grew unbearable, as did our thirst, so we bullied Grace and Thomas into going and buying some water, handing them my drinks cooling bag to help. An hour later, they returned, with sweat pouring off Thomas and Grace practically crawling along behind him: "Here," they said wearily, proffering the cool bag.

I opened it, to see that they had purchased carbonated water - the only kind available at the only shop available, the Raholp Post Office. I showed the contents to Aisleagh, who was sunbathing next to me, near to the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. From behind her sunglasses, Aisleagh peered into the bag before almost imperceptibly shaking her head.

"Ehm.... we would like still water," I said, handing the bag back.
"What?" said Thomas.
"Yes, we are going to require still, chilled, water, please."
Thomas, collapsing to the ground with heat exhaustion, just kept staring at me in horror: "Are you serious?"
"Yes, I am serious. I am also thirsty."
Grace, meanwhile, was just staring at Aisleagh, with a piteous expression in her eyes - begging not to be sent back on the trail. I had never seen Grace so broken and tired before. Regarding her best friend's misery and physical near-collapse, Aisleagh made her decision and propped herself up on her elbows: "I'm allergic to fizzy water."
Grace's mouth fell open and Thomas's was pursed into a seriously unimpressed line: "What?" asked Grace.
"Yep. I need still."
"But..."
"Allergic!"

However, Aisleagh and I failed to consider the logistics of tactics that day - because her evening was being spent with Grace, mine with Thomas. So as I was walking home with Thomas, it's fair to say that my behaviour earlier in the day did not exactly receive glowing reviews and it's equally fair to say that Aisleagh was the victim of a savage physical attack once Grace recovered her energy levels.

Anyway, today is Aisleagh's b'diddy and huge licky love to her on this most glorious of days. Through bullying, poisoning, hair pulling, biting, shopping excursions to Dublin, diets, spiders, Bones, the Lone Ranger, The X Factor marathon, painting with all the colours of the wind, paws up for Lady Gaga, drama practicals in school, the time the curtain rose on us for the school play and we were hugging each other in front of the entire audience and that terrible time were we went to a house party that was so unutterably boring that we tried to escape by climbing out the bathroom window, only to be caught by the host (your boyfriend at the time) - it's all been a delightful cycle of dysfunction.

Happy Birthday, Lovey Loverson. Lots and lots and lots of love xxx

Hugging

Recently I got to thinking (yay!) about hugging and it was actually the events of last week which made me really think about. Hugging, in general, is considered by many British people to be just a bit too "American" - whatever that means. The culture of hugging one another to say hello or goodbye is definitely not a traditional British way of doing things. It isn't always easy to ask "how do you do?" when your arms are clasped behind somebody else's back and I have a sort of schizoid love/hate relationship with the hug - I feel like it's something I should do more, I like the people I do hug, but I also have relationships in my life in which hugging would just seem bizarre, if not downright frightening.

As some of you may know, on Tuesday March 16th my uncle, Richard, passed away very unexpectedly. During Uncle Richard's Wake, the entire extended family got together most afternoons and every evening to meet visitors who had come to pay their condolences, keep an open house and keep the endless supply of never-ending tea, sandwiches and cakes without which, apparently, the entire Northern Irish Protestant culture of mourning would collapse in on itself.

Two days after Uncle Richard passed away, my cousins Jonathan and Andrew called down to see our grandparents. (They, like me, were Richard's nephews.) As Jonathan was saying goodbye to our grandfather, he hugged him and it suddenly occurred to me that Grandpa Richard and I had grown out of the habit of hugging one another once I'd turned about 15 and concluded that it wasn't "manly" or something equally foolish. Grandpa and I are very close, so there's really no good reason apart from habit for not giving him a goodbye hug. I would never leave their house without hugging Nana and giving her a kiss, but for the last eight years I can't remember really hugging my grandfather. With the sadness of Uncle Richard's death I decided to make the effort again to make sure I hugged Grandpa every time I left the house and that really has been a good thing. Undoubtedly, a lot of other family members were spurred on to be more affectionate with one another in the wake of Uncle Richard's passing - my Uncle Ivan, my cousin's husband Martin, my cousins Elaine and June and my sister Jenny were all making a real effort to make sure they hugged everyone before they left the house each night. Exceptional circumstances, no doubt, but lovely all the same.

As I was writing this I also began to think about hugging in general and it struck me that I actually hug astonishingly few of my friends. Am I dead on the inside? There are obviously some very good friends that I do hug on a regular basis, but I have never hugged the vast majority of my close personal friends. There are friends like Emerald, Alexa and Scarlett, all of whom I would usually greet with a kiss, but the only time I've ever hugged a really good friend like, say, Aisleagh, was probably when we both mutually mistook each other for another bottle of gin! And if I went to hug either Beth, Laura or Ellen, they would undoubtedly assume I was trying to choke them in some particularly new and avant-garde manner, with the end result being that Beth would make her panicked pterodactyl sound, Ellen would suffer an enormous panic attack and quite possibly a stroke and Laura would scratch a bloody vengeance into my face.

The greatest example of the anti-hugging phenomenon is undoubtedly my friend Kerry. Kerry is one of my best friends, we've been friends since the age of eleven, we have cried together, laughed together, binged together, we can finish each other's sentences and we pushed each other into self-destructive cycles of delightfulness for the last twelve years and yet not once have we ever hugged each other. When our friend Sarah attempted to mock our "frigid" ways and introduced hugging into the group, the only real result was a wave of paranoia, with me checking my back every five minutes to see if they'd stuck a note onto the back of it or a gleam of suspicious fear glinting permanently in Kerry's eyes.

But, so what? Kerry and I are not any the less close friends - dysfunctionally close, actually - because we don't hug. Neither are Sarah and I. Does it all boil down to the quite sad fact that we don't trust each other enough to hug without an attempt at sabotage? Of course it does! And that's a glorious thing. Have I been lacking in familial closeness with my grandfather for the last eight years? No, I don't think so. I love him, he loves me and that's really all that matters. The friends I do hug - great; the friends I don't - delightful.

Hugging, in the end, is a bit like drinking. There's nothing more delightful when it's the right time and nothing more sickening when you're just not in the mood, time or place for it.

In the beginning...

After several months of fearing that my technophobia meant that any attempt at blogging would end in a total and complete disaster (not dissimilar in size and scope to the "Golden Girls" spin-off), I have finally been persuaded to overcome said fears after being inspired by the excellent examples of Tea at Trianon and Louise in Lovelyland. So, I've decided to grab the metaphorical bull by the horns and here goes!

There isn't really a plan or mission statement for the blog, which could, of course, mean that things will become chaotic, but that's half the fun. I plan to keep the ranting down to a bare minimum (beyond what is obviously unavoidable) and discuss the things I'm interested in - favourite movies, books I'm reading, funny anecdotes and, of course, history.

I also hope to avoid starting too many observations with the phrase "So I got to thinking...", but I can't promise too much...