A few reasons why young people rock

I know I've been a bit rubbish at updating recently; this is mainly due to my having taken on a stupid amount of work, which is really fun, but incredibly time-guzzling. The new job (which, of course, was taken on as an as-well-as, rather than an instead-of) is with the Youth Cabinet in West Sussex; I'm managing their elections for 2010, which involves a lot of promotion and shameless self-plugging. Luckily, being a bit of a social media junkie, I'm pretty up on the whole promotion thing, so it's going OK so far.

The young people I'm working with, however, are absolutely amazing. Literally. Seriously. I know everyone says that, but it's true. They're fantastic. A few examples of what they've been doing recently:

One of them, a youth MP, has spoken at the House of Commons about the importance of representing young people's views at government level, and has also been on BBC Radio talking about the Youth Cabinet.

Last week, we went to the RUOK? Cyber Bullying Awareness event, and seven young people took over and ran all the workshops. They were wonderful, and I learned all sorts of things about the issues affecting the tech-savvy generation in schools today.

A couple of weeks before that, we ran Local Democracy Day; lots of schools from across Sussex came along and talked about their ideal schools of the future. The things they said were fed back into government policy departments; so the young people will actually be influencing the policy directly. Some MPs came and we had quite a fiery 'question time' event with them.

Being surrounded by such amazing examples of constant, unabashed enthusiasm really inspires people to act, and it can only be a good thing that so many young people are engaging fully in their local (and national) communities. Which is why this new campaign from The Children's Mutual is such an important thing: the point of it is to help parents to facilitate their kids' dreams, to allow them to achieve anything they want to, and to be ready and able to guide and assist them in their different paths.

Go on, have a look.

Une vidéo qui nous rappelle de respirer

Broken Laptops and West Sussex Youth Cabinet

The other day, standing on the rush-hour tube, a Scary Businessman bumped into me and my laptop fell on the floor. I bent down to pick it up. Not very exciting. Didn't think anything of it. Unfortunately, when I got on the train home, I found this:

Now my poor laptop is having a new screen, which has been ordered but hasn't arrived yet, so I'm on the spare laptop for a while, which is surprisingly good, except that there's no Microsoft Office and everything happens with a slight delay. But at least it has a whole screen.

This was, without a doubt, a Very Busy Week. Schools across the county will be receiving information packs about West Sussex Youth Cabinet after the half-term; and they'd better like them! On Tuesday, I dragged myself out of bed at 4.30 to write 330 individually-tailored letters and print off 660 pieces of paper. On Wednesday, I worked from 7.30 in the morning until midnight, signing 330 pieces of paper, putting together information packs in shiny little folders, labelling envelopes and loading them up with goodies. Unfortunately, not having been caffeinated enough for this, I did a stupid thing: labelled all the envelopes first, then had to find the correct one for each personalised letter, thus taking a lot longer than it probably would have otherwise. Sigh.

Still, now everyone in the county (pretty much) knows about the Youth Cabinet - and if they didn't before, they do now. Come join!

Hilarious cover letters, fairies in crystal glass and a very busy fortnight

A few days ago, we received one of the most hilarious cover letters I have ever seen. It was also, in its way, fantastic; but more from a literal, concerned-with-fantasy viewpoint than from a 'very good' one. An excerpt:

'There are many kinds of people living in me. One for example is the absolute freedom-loving and life-enjoying 'clochard', other is the ultimate analysing person... There is also a person that lives inside one of the fairy tales on a high mountain peak that is made from blue crystal glass, surrounded by colourful clouds of imagination - leaded by millions untraditional of ideas.'

I have an appreciation for the absurd. I really do. And I definitely have an appreciation for fairies. But a cover letter is one of those places where you just don't talk about the people who live inside your mind... having said that, it definitely drew our attention, and it's the only cover letter whose contents I can recall.

In other news, it's been a long and wonderful couple of weeks. Lots of 17-hour working days, lots of coffee, lots of fun. At the moment, it's half-past five in the morning, in quarter of an hour I have to be at the station getting on a train, but for now I'm caffeinating, blogging and tweeting. All worthy pursuits.

My Workload Increases and Shop Friend is Invaded by the French

Shop Friend has recently moved from a market stall into a full-blown shop, and has now painted the outside, making it beautiful. She called me concerned the other day: "Ze French are 'ere!" I wasn't going to believe her until she gave me proof:

In other news, everything has been happening both simultaneously and very, very fast. New Job is fantastic, but of course rather than doing the normal thing and resigning from Old Job to take it on, I've kept Old Job (or rather, Old Jobs), so now I have four Current Jobs. They are all fantastic and I love them dearly, which is why I haven't given any of them up. Nor would I want to.

This does mean, however, that yesterday I sprung out of bed at 4.45 to sit in the living room and work on Research Job, before jumping on a train at 7.00 to go to Advertising Job (doing Research Job on the train as well, of course). Arrived at Advertising Job at nine, had a meeting, spent the morning working in a manner that can only be called desperate and drastic; left at a run at 1.30 to get to my train by 2.30. Worked Research Job on the train again; arrived on the coast at 4.00, rushed in to a meeting about sexual health education in schools, flew from that into a meeting with West Sussex Youth Cabinet, who are fantastic. At 9.00, once that was over and I'd cleared up the debris, I headed into the bowels of County Hall to continue working, being very impressed by the movement-sensitive lights which popped into life when I walked down every corridor. Arrived home at 11.30 after a pretty long day, checked my email, collapsed into bed and got up again this morning ready for another crazy day.

Luckily, the really crazy days don't happen every day - not even every weekday - so there is time to recuperate slightly in between all the running and jumping and meeting and email-checking.

What a fantastic week so far; and it's only just begun.

Funerals, Blackness and Letting Go of Satan

Sorry about the lack of recent communication. It's been quite a quiet couple of weeks; which hasn't, of course, meant that things aren't happening. Things are. But slowly.

Firstly, Satan is doing alright; his final draft appeared yesterday (I know, another final draft…), and he will be being submitted to People by the end of the week. I think I’ve come to feel about the paper the way more maternally-minded women feel about their children: I don’t want to send it into the world in case someone hurts it or thinks it’s wrong. But baby birds must fly the nest, and so must academic papers.

This morning I got out of bed at an ungodly hour, hence the fact that this is taking me far longer to type than it normally would. I am on my way to work for an hour, then to a funeral, then a mad dash across London in an attempt to catch a train I will almost certainly miss. But hopefully not.

Funeral presented one main problem this morning: what to wear. Generally, I don’t give much thought to my appearance beyond ‘Will people look at it without their eyes burning?’, ‘Does it smell?’, and ‘Is it comfy?’. I recognise, however, that funerals require a certain dress code; preferably black, particularly for quite traditionally-minded people such as the family of the deceased. So I rummaged through my wardrobe and found a skimpy top that would have fitted me a year and a half ago, before I discovered pie, but which would these days be more likely to be eaten by my belly. No can do.

I disappeared into the bathroom to open the chest where I keep my ‘They’ll fit me one day’ clothes. No black there. Back to the bedroom. Eventually, I threw on Husband’s black jumper, which isn’t even bordering on smart, but I wore it to the previous funeral I attended this year and no one seemed particularly offended.

Wishing I were fifteen again and back in my 'goth phase', I picked up a black velvet skirt that has never fitted me and probably never will, and tried it on. On it went, surprisingly. A pair of black leggings finished the job. Satisfied, I wandered round the flat for a while and discovered just how uncomfortable I felt. ‘You’ll just have to lump it’, I told myself, racing around frantically to get everything ready. At ten to seven, when I really should have left already, I replaced the skirt and leggings with a pair of jogging bottoms (bought for the purpose of jogging, but now relegated to the position of ‘it’s comfy, so I’ll wear it in the house’), shoved the offending articles into a bag to be put on just before the funeral, somehow managed to find a pair of black shoes that weren’t falling apart, and left for the station in a flurry of black shawls, carrier bags and laptop cases. Let the week begin.

International Competition by Nissan & Designboom

Try your hand at designing a car park around Nissan's Qashqai car: