I is for Inspiration

So many people and things inspire me. Any given day, song or a book can inspire me to be stronger in a personal attitude or make a decision, a friend’s poise and dignity can inspire me to behave in a similar way, a commuter’s bold choice of outfit can inspire me to experiment and those further ahead down the route to being A Writer can inspire me to stop dwelling on the ‘what ifs’ and carry on. I thought I’d write a little ode to those who push me and motivate me and encourage me to be a better, braver or simply more fabulous person.

Caitlin Moran
You probably know this if you’re a regular reader, because I reference Moran’s wit and wisdom quite a bit. It’s hard to describe her if you haven’t read any of her stuff, but as a freelance writer, interviewer and all round journalistic firecracker, she inspires me to work harder or risk never being as well-read, articulate and funny as her. She’s also from humble beginnings and the state school system but works for The Times, as well as having fabulously punky tastes and a penchant for overexcited capitals (usually when tweeting the word *SCREAM*). If you’re still not sure, follow her on Twitter and I guarantee she will have you howling in minutes.

Angelina Jolie
*Sigh*, no, not for the husband-stealing or the wafer-thin calves, but because the woman’s a bloody phenomenon. Jolie shows that no amount of personal craziness or bad PR record can obscure true talent, and looking at her you just know she’s never stopped to think ‘What if this wrecks my chances of getting that next big part?’ Because she’s hypnotic as a psychotic teen in Girl, Interrupted, she’s harrowing as a courageous mother in Changeling and funny as an assassin with a suburban double life in Mr and Mrs Smith. Because she’s the only choice for icons as diverse as Marilyn, Cleopatra and Lara Croft, and because she kicks more ass per movie than most Hollywood males put together. When I read she’d turned down a Bond Girl role because she’d rather be the next 007, I could’ve kissed her. As well as being a thrill-seeking badass and a stellar actress, Ange also manages to be wonderfully chic and feminine on the red carpet. I'm going to ignore all the 'rainbow mom' stuff as i'm sure it's just too many years in Hollywood, but she is also genuinely and deeply involved in the UN and not afraid to speak up on important matters. If you hate her, I'm pretty sure it’s just because you want to be her.

My Mum
My mum is the most direct inspiration for me because she has always seemed to ‘have it all’ – not in the material sense, but in terms of style, intellect, friendships, work ethic, ambition and maternal brilliance. So I suppose she’s always ‘balanced it all’, and taught me the equal importance of further education and being able to whip up a sublime bread and butter pudding. She was an amazing stay-at-home mum (due to being creative with working from home and sacrificing lots of luxuries) for years, studied her socks off to get a degree, worked her way up to management level in fewer years than anyone I know and even managed to wedge in an MA this year as well as getting her dream job and celebrating 30 years of marriage. Need any more reasons? She’s also the best hugger in the entire world – fact.

Lady Gaga
There’s been a bit of a Gaga backlash of late and I honestly can't understand it. People seem to think she’s a fame-whorish type who is all exhibitionist and no substance, but I can only assume they haven’t listened to a note of her music. It’s pop, but it’s crazy, bold, lyrically sharp pop, vocally challenging and endlessly catchy. She’s also absolutely incredible live – I won’t hear a word against this – just watch this for starters. She has famous fans ranging from Elton John, the hard-to-please Perez Hilton, Janet Jackson and Helen Mirren, and is a very vocal gay rights activist, as well as giving all her little teenage ‘freaks’ and ‘monsters’ a powerful role model to identify with during adolescence. In an industry filled with bland, girly, autotuned one hit wonders, we should surely regard Gaga as some sort of female messiah? More than anything, she just seems fearless – I love that she puts all of her money back into her live shows and designs her performance concepts. More vulnerable than Madonna and saner than Michael Jackson, a better songwriter than Kylie and ten times more talented than Britney; she’s just a tiny little thing under all the glitz and theatrics, but Gaga’s a budding icon and should be recognised as such.

Christine Stovell
I have only had the pleasure of meeting Chris once, but I follow her blog and have watched the well-deserved publication of her brilliant book Turning the Tide in the last year. She is inspirational because she decided it wasn’t too late to do the thing she’d always wanted to do, and proved she had the metaphorical balls to do it. Not only do I respect her as a writer, but she has reminded me that the urge to write never goes away; so on those days when a nondescript but well-paid job beckons to me with its perks of a stable life and steady income, I know I shouldn’t give in so easy. Follow her on Twitter and look out for her next book!

Blair Waldorf
Oh well... there had to be a fictional one. Gossip Girl's Blair is a purely aesthetic idol of mine, a perfectly groomed Park Avenue princess with pearls, gloves and a pout to match. It's funny as it isn't really my style, but the first time I saw actress Leighton Meester as the scheming anti-heroine of the show, I just fell in love with Blair's buttoned-down look. If you're unfamiliar with the addictive trash TV that is Gossip Girl, this blog explains Blair's look pretty well. She may not be the 'world peace' type, but she's impossibly chic and I can't help but covet her from her beret to her Mary Janes.

Jason Robert Brown
Finally, an inspirational male! Brown is one of my favourite composers (and in my opinion, one of the best in musical theatre), and I'm practically hyperventilating at the thought of seeing him performing his work live in less than three weeks' time. His musicals and song cycles, including Songs for a New World, Parade and The Last Five Years include some of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, so technically complex and lyrically witty, moving and brutal that I never get tired of listening to them and always hear something new each time. JRB is so good that I bought two of his piano books - and I can barely play Happy Birthday. If you're not a fan of the genre (described amusingly in Bridget Jones' Diary as 'men standing with their legs apart, bellowing') I suggest you listen to Lauren Kennedy's album Songs of Jason Robert Brown, but if you do like a musical - and a real story, none of your Sweet Charity nonsense - I would recommend The Last Five Years.

Nigella Lawson
I adore Nigella. I adore her buttercreamy, olive-oily, chocolate-saucey TV shows and cookbooks, her cooking community website, and her glorious sex bomb image that confirms that 50 really can be your prime. They say that after a certain age you have to choose between your face or your arse (the logic being, I presume, that plumper women have a sort of natural collagen effect happening) but I think Nigella is living proof you can have your cake and eat it.

Jo March
My favourite literary heroine, a tomboy with a hot temper and a desire for independence who never lets the fact that she is a girl push her to give up her dreams or conform to a small-town ideal. I like Jo because she's flawed, impulsive and has big dreams, as well as being the at the centre of one of my favourite childhood books. If Louisa May Alcott and her literary avatar Jo could pick up a pen and compete with the male novelists of their time, hindered by huge petticoats and cultural prejudice, I really don't have a reason to moan in 2010.

Lindy West
Another writer, brought to most people's attention with her less-than-rave review of Sex and the City 2 (some harsh language, folks) and who keeps me smiling regularly with her original style and ponderings on the world. Her column in Seattle paper The Stranger is a cult hit, and many of my favourite writers have followed her work since that review. Why do I love her? Because no subject is too obscure to comment on, from hippy rituals to liquorice. She can transform anything into excellent reading, and that inspires the hell out of me.


This ended up being a slightly weird combination of the very real, the loosely acquainted, the fictional, the obscure and the mega-famous. But it's all true, and I don't think a girl should have to pretend she's only inspired by Mother Teresa or the Lorax. Feel free to drop me a comment with your own inspirations.

Life is beautiful

I try not to weigh in on too many ethical arguments, I believe everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but organ donation is too close to my heart for me to stay out of completely. I think it’s because it’s such an essentially ‘good’ thing to be in favour of, there really isn’t a downside. Obviously your death might be seen as the downside, but that’s pretty much going to happen anyway. My thoughts on the whole subject are fairly simple: you die (fingers crossed reasonably old, quick & painless), you are cremated/buried/mummified depending on your mortal preferences – and that’s probably it. No more breathing, blood-pumping or toxin-ridding required. Even if you believe you’ll be hanging out with Jesus, Buddha, Allah or all of the above, that’s probably the soul part of you, right? Not the flesh and tissue. This may all seem a bit brutal, but who can argue that you need your physical wholeness to enter the next world, achieve nirvana, or just become part of the earth, Lion King style? I haven’t met anyone with a serious philosophical objection to organ removal once you’re pronounced braindead. Here are the scary facts: you are more likely to need a transplant than to become a donor. And although 90% of the population support organ donation, only 25% are on the Organ Donor Register.

However, who’s to say what my opinion on all this would be without a personal link to organ donation? As I’m sure most of you know, my older sister who I’m very close to was on the brink of death three years ago from progressive lung damage caused by Cystic Fibrosis, and was saved only by the generosity of strangers. A family who bravely rose above all the emotional turmoil of a bereavement and chose to make a difference for several people in dire need of an organ transplant (one person donating can save the life of up to nine people waiting). She received her new lungs in January 2007, and has gone from being a wafer-thin, icy pale thing devoid of energy, barely able to draw breath, to being a rosy-pink, energetic, noisy woman able to get married, get working, move into a new house… the difference is indescribable, all because complete strangers opened their mind to the prospect of giving the gift of life.

My sister made an appearance on GMTV this morning talking about a friend she made through a CF support network online, who is now at the point she was three years ago, the point where doctors sat us down and told us to say our goodbyes, as she had no reserve left to fight another lung collapse. Like Emily, Jessica is miraculously fighting through, but after four years of waiting, it is no longer her responsibility to prolong her life. She has kept her end of the bargain – the transplant waiting list demands staying in the country, not working or going out too much, preserving your health as carefully as possible for the operation – and now the rest of the country needs to chip in and boost her odds of survival. If you do nothing else today, please have a look at the facts , and consider signing up to the NHS donor register. Better still, talk to your family, your partner or your close friends about what they would want for their body if their time was up. If you want to spread the word and help Jess have a shot at the wonderful future my sister has been lucky enough

to experience, please repost Jess’s story in your facebook status, Twitter, blog or email the message to your friends or colleagues. The only way we can stop the amount of people dying per year is to pass this on.

Emily pre-transplant

Summer Forecast

Here comes the sun... Or so say the Met office, predicting blue skies and temperatures exceeding 30 degrees at times. Being a total sun bunny, I was thrilled to hear this, as I'm hoping for many a summer weekend filled with barbecues, lawn-lazing, beach trips, water fights and countless ice lollies. However, I did have to fight the urge to snigger at the news coverage of today's report. BBC News online led with the Met Office's scientific declaration that we are "odds on for a barbecue summer", while the Guardian hammered home the vital 'breaking news' that we are 'unlikely' to have as much of a poor summer as the previous two 'wash-outs'.

Now, I am no meteorologist but even I know the weather is an unpredictable beast, often undermining the experts with its random twists and turns. This struck me as a bit of a non-story (actually, it failed to even strike me- more of a nudge, really), with on-the-fence vocab ruling out any real facts. If anything, the tone of the press seems to be humouring us, trying to boost us amid swine flu and debt hell with a vaguely hopeful guess about whether we'll be breaking out the SPF or the brollies this summer.

The mission to understate the matter did bring a smile to my face, however. BBC broadcaster Laura Tobin was determined not to be outwitted by the wily British climate, announcing that 'Compared to last summer, which was miserable,' (thanks for the reminder) '... it will probably be positive for the majority of people.' No hate mail for her come August, then.

Also in the news today is the announcement that summer-born children will be given the opportunity to start school or nursery up to two terms earlier, with schools offering with a free place after their fourth birthday. Any talk of 'summer babies', particularly August-born, always makes my blood boil. Writing as the owner of a very, very end of August birthday, I resent the constantly patronizing tone towards those just a few months younger than their school peers. I emphasize 'younger than', as people often confuse this with 'behind'. I understand how a child can fall behind in school, but surely an August 31st child starting the same school year as a September 1st child has exactly the same exposure to the curriculum?

Many would take into account maturity (which is surely not based on month of birth but style of parenting, number of older or younger siblings and many other variables) and amount of home education, which I would argue also relies on the parents preparing their youngest-in-the-year for the pressures of school. I can say I have never felt overwhelmed or particularly struggled with school, while I know many of my peers born the calendar year before me have repeatedly fallen behind. I remember feeling incensed when, as I got ready to receive my First class degree last summer, GMTV were reporting in the background about 'poor' August babies not being given extra attention in the classroom. I'm sure there are a few cases, but I'm equally certain that this rationalization is being used left, right and centre to excuse laziness, behavioural issues and even valid learning difficulties.

Even if I am the exception that proves the rule (and I know a lot of sharp and successful August-borns), what of March, April and May babies? They fall in the younger half of the academic year, and yet there appear to be few educational concerns about Spring-born infants. Enough of a rant, really, but it does make me cross that something as simple as my date of birth should single me out as someone who will find life hard.

I've started back at Elle as their new Features assistant, and am loving it already. Although it will be tough and hectic day-to-day, it is a fabulous office with lovely and very professional ladies, none of your Devil Wears Prada divas. I'm so looking forward to being up in West London this summer, hopefully in some cute skirts and gladiator sandals (still searching for Roman perfection: check out Kate Moss's Steve Madden beauties below), and I'm feeling more like a proper writer every day...

She may just be a bad excuse for Topshop to charge £18 a vest, but by god La Moss can do off-duty chic.