Back To School

"Conkers lying on the ground, the air is cooler. And I feel like I've just started uni."

Zorbing by Stornoway

Every late September I can't help but remember the autumn that I was 18. Seeing the streets of Leicester suddenly clogged with excited, fresh-faced students takes me back to the year I was one of them.

1996. I'd dyed my hair black over the summer, listened to too much gloomy indie music, and been suffering from what I now recognize as crippling anxiety attacks. I hid in my room when the phone rang; I panicked if I received any post. The world suddenly felt too big and too wide and I was about to go out into it.

I went to university in pursuit of adventure. My most fervent hope was to find my people, which at the time meant slim-hipped boys with floppy hair and eyeliner; girls in Manics t-shirts and glittery nail polish. I thought that if I could just find these people I'd finally be happy (conveniently ignoring the fact that I'd spent the previous two years hanging out with people who exactly matched that description, and it hadn't got me anything except a self-harm problem and the editorship of a mildly successful indie fanzine).

I was nothing short of devastated, then, to meet the students at Leicester University and discover that they were so far from being my people it was almost laughable. My fellow halls of residence, erm, residents were genuinely nice but, from the rugby-playing law students downstairs to the Home Counties public school girls on my corridor, I had nothing in common with them. For their part, they viewed me as something akin to an exotic animal in a zoo: something to be gazed at from afar, but not got too close to.

Having been planning my escape from Bradford since the age of ten, the reality of life at university was a disappointment to say the least. I'd sincerely hoped that, after years of being the brightest kid in class, further education would finally provide me with the challenge and intellectual debate I so sorely wished for (and yes, I do realise that makes me sound like a particularly pretentious Adrian Mole). My hope was quickly dashed against the rocks of a dull curriculum taught by indifferent lecturers. I'll readily admit that I gave up, decided not to bother trying, and emerged a few years later with a 2:2 degree that I barely deserved.

So it's with no little trepidation that, this week, I start a Masters degree in Gender Studies at the University of Leeds.

My first assignment is to write about a text that inspired me to study this course I'm struggling. I was born into a family in which political activism comes as naturally as breathing. My mum raised me as a feminist and I grew up in a house lined with books by Germaine Greer, Audre Lorde, Sheila Rowbotham and numerous other feminist luminaries. When I was at school (and later, during my undergraduate degree) I was the person who brought every discussion back to feminism or queer theory. Whether discussing the works of Charlotte Bronte or the sociology of the city, my preoccupying thought was always, "what's the feminist perspective on this?"

It's difficult, therefore, to pinpoint a single text or moment in time that made me think, "Aha! I want to study gender!" Honestly, as long as I can remember in my adult life, this course has been my dream. I still have, stashed away somewhere, the Gender Studies MA prospectus from 2001. And every few years since then I've opened the Leeds University website and idly looked through the course content thinking, "If only." But it always felt like an impossible goal - too far away from my work in Leicester, too competitive for someone with my crappy degree and, most importantly, too expensive.

As with so many things in our unfortunately couple-centric world, what seemed impossible when I was on my own became within reach once I met a partner. Since Thomas moved in I've been able to put more into savings than was possible before and, because he now has a three year contract at Loughborough University on a very decent salary, we're able to take the financial hit of me cutting my hours at work. More than anything, though, he has been my cheerleader and chief encourager, telling me that of course I should apply, that of course I'd be accepted, and that of course I'll manage the work. Whenever I have wobbles about the huge reading list or the added stress, I have an actual academic on hand to talk me down, find the journal articles I need, make me cups of tea, and remind me just what the hell Harvard referencing is.

I have no doubt that the next two years will be challenging. That at times, between the workload and the six hour weekly commutes, I'll feel like giving up. But for now, at least, I'm looking forward to being one of those excited and fresh-faced (ahem) students again. Because how many people can say that their dreams come true?

A Public Saying To All Our Friends: Our Wedding Ceremony

When you're planning a wedding ceremony from scratch there's so much to think about. We wanted ours to be entirely different from the traditional legal wedding ceremony, both in wording and in structure. We wanted it to reflect our values, as individuals and as a couple, and to be explicitly feminist. Most importantly, we wanted it to be fun.

We'd chosen Leicester's Guildhall for our ceremony for a number of reasons, chief amongst which was OH MY GOD JUST LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS! It was also, being a council-run venue, reasonably priced, and the staff were amazing and totally on board with our plans for a quirky, untraditional ceremony.

Having greeted all our guests together (which was lovely and something I'd highly recommend, as it gave me a chance to say hello to everyone - and admire their outfits - instead of sitting somewhere 'backstage', as brides usually do, feeling increasingly nervous), everyone was seated ready to begin. Instead of entering separately or, god forbid, me being 'given away' by my dad, we walked into the ceremony hall together to the strains of Sam Cooke's You Send Me.

Our friend Richard was officiating the ceremony for us, partly because as a teacher, he had the perfect voice to fill the hall and the confidence to stand up in front of 70 people. Although he confessed later that he'd felt anxious about it, you'd never have guessed.

Richard opened with a beautifully written, and very funny, speech, and was followed by Julia, Thomas's sister, reading the Marge Piercy poem that I shared in my last wedding post. We'd decided to have all the speeches within the ceremony, rather than at the party afterwards, so two of Thomas's best friends - Bart and Tim - gave what became the equivalent of a best man's speech (I certainly wasn't expecting the word "balls" to be bandied around quite so much!). My mum also spoke, beautifully and movingly, and two friends - Cara and Mathijs - both gave readings.

"In my opinion the best thing you can you do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out of your ass. That’s the kind of person that’s worth sticking with."

From the film Juno

We'd chosen our readings carefully because we wanted them to reflect not just the ethos of our day but also the person reading. So Julia, one of the bravest and most awesome feminists I know, got the Marge Piercy poem. Cara seemed perfectly suited to the extract from Juno (plus it has the bonus of being short, as she wasn't wild about having to speak in public). Finally, Mathijs read a quote from the film Frida which we knew would suit his oratory style and, for us, summed up everything we hoped for about our marriage.

"I don't believe in marriage... I think at worst it's a hostile political act, a way for small-minded men to keep women in the house and out of the way, wrapped up in the guise of tradition and conservative religious nonsense. At best, it's a happy delusion - these two people who truly love each other and have no idea how truly miserable they're about to make each other. But, when two people know that, and they decide with eyes wide open to face each other and get married anyway, then I don't think it's conservative or delusional. I think it's radical and courageous and very romantic."

From the film Frida

My strongest memory of my whole wedding day - but particularly of the ceremony - is of laughter. We'd wanted it to feel relaxed and joyful, and for people to feel more involved in proceedings than  the traditional ceremony usually allows. Having a friend officiate and therefore removing the legal stuff meant every single word was meaningful and personal to us. But we retained some bits of a traditional ceremony, for example exchanging rings and saying vows, although our vows were ones we'd written together:

"I commit myself to our life together because I love who you are now
and who you are yet to become.

I promise to stand with you and to fight with you for everything we believe in.

I promise to support your freedom to be, to grow and to do all you wish."

And then, all too soon, it was time for Prosecco and cake in the Guildhall courtyard, and a chance to properly catch up with people (I recall a lot of hugging and squealing, most of it from me).

It's been wonderful, while writing this, to reflect on our ceremony and I'm very glad to say that with the benefit of hindsight there's nothing we'd do differently. We had so very many lovely comments afterwards, saying how much people had enjoyed and been moved by the ceremony. I'm going to end by quoting our friend Rose who, the day afterwards, wrote the following on Instagram:
"I'm not a fan of weddings [preach!]. They are largely tedious exercises in conspicuous consumption in the services of an archaic institution. But Janet and Thomas's was utterly joyous and felt totally authentic to them as a couple." Wedding goals achieved.

All photographs by James Mottram Photography

My other wedding posts:

A Very Leicester Wedding

A Great Excuse For A Party

Planning An Anxiety-Friendly Wedding

A Great Excuse For A Party

We didn't want to call it a wedding. We avoided using that word on the invitations and, in conversation and social media posts, opted for phrases like liefdesfeestje and celebration instead.

Our motivation when planning was simple: to get all our friends and family together for a big party. Why not just do exactly that, I hear you ask. Just throw a party and not bother with the wedding stuff? It'd be easy, right? Well, for most people maybe. But not if your parents are immigrants so you don't have any relatives in the UK, and your partners best friends all live in other countries. Then, it's less easy to get people together for 'just' a party. We had to ask ourselves, what would motivate people to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles? Only a wedding, a celebration, a liefdesfeestje, would do.

Still, though we continued to avoid the W-word (although we also got annoyed when my mum and step-mum said "It wasn't really a wedding" - go figure). For reasons both political and personal - weddings, lets face it, aren't very cool or punk - both Thomas and I resisted until, a few months before the celebration, we came across a poem that ended up playing a central part of our ceremony. Read beautifully by Thomas' sister, Julia (a fellow kickass feminist), I'm going to reproduce it here because, for me, there's nothing that better explains how we came to be at peace with the W-word and, indeed, with the notion of marriage.

Why Marry At All by Marge Piercy

Why mar what has grown up between the cracks
and flourished like a weed
that discovers itself to bear rugged
spikes of magenta blossoms in August,
ironweed sturdy and bold,
a perennial that endures winters to persist?

Why register with the state?
Why enlist in the legions of the respectable?
Why risk the whole apparatus of roles
and rules, of laws and liabilities?
Why license our bed at the foot
like our Datsun truck: will the mileage improve?

Why encumber our love with patriarchal
word stones, with the old armor
of husband and the corset stays
and the chains of wife? Marriage
meant buying a breeding womb
and sole claim to enforced sexual service.

Marriage has built boxes in which women
have burst their hearts sooner
than those walls; boxes of private
slow murder and the fading of the bloom
in the blood; boxes in which secret
bruises appear like toadstools in the morning.

But we cannot invent a language
of new grunts. We start where we find
ourselves, at this time and place.

Which is always the crossing of roads
that began beyond the earth’s curve
but whose destination we can now alter.

This is a public saying to all our friends
that we want to stay together. We want
to share our lives. We mean to pledge
ourselves through times of broken stone
and seasons of rose and ripe plum;
we have found out, we know, we want to continue.

"A public saying to all our friends," isn't that beautiful? The poem brought us round to thinking about the purpose of weddings, of the ways in which they can be a positive declaration and, yes, a celebration. Ultimately, we found ourselves realising, we could call it whatever we liked but if you're both wearing fancy clothes and saying vows and there's cake and confetti, it's probably a wedding. And a really great excuse for a party.

All photographs by James Mottram Photography

My other wedding posts:

Our Feminist, Humanist Ceremony

A Very Leicester Wedding

Planning An Anxiety-Friendly Wedding

Self-Care In The Era Of Trump & Brexit

I spent much of 2016 depressed, a mental health crisis triggered by the Brexit vote and exacerbated by the US elections. Yet I've begun 2017 in the most positive place for years and I wondered, why? When the world is undeniably getting worse, not better, and the news out of America becomes more and more dystopian, why am I feeling so cheerful?

I think the answer has to do with finally cracking a self-care routine that really works for me. Siobhan wrote eloquently and brilliantly last week on why self-care can be a problematic term and I very much suggest you read it, but I'm about to completely ignore her very valid argument that "self-care articles are [not] the way forward" and write one of my own.

I am very privileged - I hold a UK passport and am white, cisgender, and middle class, all of which means I am able to sometimes close the door and take a break from the noise of the world. It's important to recognise that this is not a privilege that everyone in this country - let alone the world - has. My self-care routines aren't about ignoring what's happening, they're about taking time to regroup and recharge so I'm better able to be useful in what has become a fight against fascism.

I'm accepting my limits with regard to activism and advocacy, while recognising what I can do
I spent a lot of 2016 beating myself up about the fact that my anxiety prevents me from going to protests and marches. I find large groups challenging in so many ways, from social anxiety to crowd-related panic attacks to IBS anxiety about not always having a loo accessible, and I saw this as a failing on my part, rather than looking at what else I could do. I wrote at the start of the year about not wanting to use my mental & physical health as an excuse to not take action, but I'm learning that it's important to recognise that there are many and varied ways of carrying out activism and resistance.

Thomas has encouraged me to view my writing as a valid form of activism, and one I can engage in from home even when my health is bad. Instead of marching, I'm writing regularly to my MP (which Write To Them makes incredibly easy). I'm putting my money where my mouth is on local, national and international levels. I've set up a direct debit to Leicester Rape Crisis, donated to the UK Black Lives Matter justice fund, Planned Parenthood and, after this weekend's events, to the ACLU as they seek to challenge the Muslim Ban in court.

Think about what actions you can take within your own limits - but also don't be afraid to sometimes push those limits. I know that a large protest in London is not achievable for me, but I joined a smaller local demo last night and although it was outside my comfort zone, I'm very glad I went. Being with others who feel the same anger, who also want change, is also a form of self-care.

I am staying off social media
I'm a social media addict and can happily spend an evening whiling away time on Twitter and Facebook, without achieving anything concrete. But I realised after Brexit that Twitter was having a detrimental affect on my mood; I could feel my anxiety and unhappiness kicking into higher gear as soon as I opened the app. And no wonder! At the moment it's an endless scroll of misery, brutality and fascism. So I deleted the app. I'm still reading the news, keeping abreast of what's happening, and taking actions where I can. But only visiting Twitter once a day has made an enormous difference to my mood.

Take time to consider your social media use and ask: is it telling me something new or does it make me happy? If the answer to both is "no" then switch off. It's ok to acknowledge that you have limits; it's ok to prioritise your health.

I am making & doing
In the run-up to Christmas I started sewing a lot and noticed an immediate upswing in my mood. And now that the festive season has passed I'm in full-on zine mode. Since the start of January I've finished one and started on my second, and seeing something tangible come out of my scribbling is hugely rewarding.

Make time each week for creative pursuits. This could be anything: baking, gardening, drawing, knitting, colouring... whatever you find most enjoyable. Spending time on an activity that requires both concentration and calm is a quick route to zen-like relaxation

I am embracing hygge
Yup, that word I'm afraid, but never fear - I'm not about to tell you to buy expensive new throws or designer Scandi candlesticks. What I am doing is making duvet forts on the sofa, lighting the fire, turning off my phone, and drinking lots of tea. Not exactly revolutionary, I know, but I'm trying to recognise this for what it is - essential self-care and something to be enjoyed mindfully - rather than beating myself up about not being more productive. Some days just call for fresh pyjamas, a 99p bunch of daffodils, and a good book, and that's ok.

A Wedding Planning Update

When you're planning a wedding - whether it be the most traditional, big-white-gown-and-stately-home event or, as Thomas and I have taken to describing ours, an anarcho-punk/feminist leifdesfeestje* - you quickly learn that other people have A Lot Of Thoughts And Opinions about weddings.

And this despite that fact that we've been incredibly lucky that our families, who are thrilled that we're making this commitment (albeit non-legal) to each other, genuinely couldn't be less interested in dictating to us exactly how we should go about it. Our friends, too, have been very accepting of and excited about the direction in which we've chosen to take our wedding: namely, a ceremony officiated by a good friend of ours, with all the readings and speeches and vows one would associate with a wedding but without the legal bit, followed by a three course vegan meal and piss-up in our favourite pub.

But still the questions come...

Are you having a theme? Err, aside from love and commitment? No. 

A seating plan? No. 

Best man and bridesmaids? Well, my little nieces aside (who I couldn't in good conscience deny the chance to put on a pretty dress and call themselves bridesmaids), no. 

Hen and stag dos? Probably not, although Thomas has expressed a preference to go on a "nature walk" for his stag do. I kid you not.

Changing your name? Erm, have you even met me? Hell no!

As our friends and family have quickly realised, the answer to pretty much any question about the wedding is, "No, we're not bothering with that."

And then, the why.

I'm crafty, creative, details oriented and a micro-manager: all the ingredients for a bridezilla, a wife-to-be hand-stitching favours for a year before the ceremony and obsessing over every element. So it's as strange and surprising to me as it is to those who know me well that, when it comes to our wedding, I honestly couldn't care less.

What is important to me is this: that some of my family from overseas are able to be there; that Thomas's friends from the Netherlands come; that our UK-based friends and family are in full attendance; and that we have an occasion full of fun, laughter and love, while lacking in the patriarchal traditions that are so intrinsically entwined with wedding ceremonies. Oh, and I'd like a pretty twirly dress that doesn't cost ££££ (this last has at least already been achieved, with a £16 bargain dress of my dreams).

So there aren't going to be most of the usual trappings of a wedding. Instead we're crafting something that is completely, totally us. Our ceremony is explicitly political, from the readings we've chosen to the promises and vows we will make. It might seem a strange choice but politics - especially feminist and anarchist politics - are intrinsic to our relationship. They are what we first bonded over and are what we both value so much in each other. We have, in our four years together, both politicised the other: me pushing Thomas towards a queer, intersectional, trans-inclusive feminism and introducing him to fat activism; he, coming from an anarchist punk scene in the Netherlands that is extremely active in pro-refugee activism, pushing me to be more radical in my politics and less tolerant of middle-way liberalism. We could no more separate politics from our wedding day than we could from our lives.

And so, an anarcho-punk/feminist liefdesfeestje it is. On 31st July 2017 I will wear my pretty, twirly, £16 dress and Thomas - fresh from his nature walk (insert eye roll emoji) - will be suited and booted, and we'll make our vows in the most beautiful building in Leicester, in front of the people we love most. We'll listen to the music that's special to us**, drink Prosecco and cider, eat heaps of vegan food***, and be merry. I really cannot wait.

*Dutch for love party, which we avoid because in English it sounds like we're hosting an orgy.

** Generously, I have offered Thomas a 35 minute slot on the playlist for his terrible 80s MOR, while I get to choose the rest of the music.

*** See, we both have priorities: mine is music, so I get to pick; his is food, so he gets to make it all vegan.