Show us your Manuelas, Love

There’s an ad on Spanish telly currently that I feel compelled to tell you about. I want you to see it for yourselves. It’s for underwear from the Italian lingerie company Intimissimi, a brand that until now had passed me by, in a sort of “oh yes they’re everywhere but I never really bought anything there, because they’re sort of everywhere and they’re sort of blandly overpriced” way. 

Until this advert found its way into my living room.

Seriously, you have to watch it.

In said ad, we are introduced to a dashing young brunette in her bra and knickers, who appears to be trying to read and make notes in a chilly-looking industrial warehouse space full of books. Ostensibly, she is studying, because soon, flashing onscreen is Maria: Student, Madrid, accompanied by her voiceover - “I’m a student. I’m curious. I’m determined. I am the warmth of my laughter. This is my story.”  (Ok, I admit this is badly, roughly translated from the Spanish, which is in turn translated from the original Italian ad. But I think you get the idea).The hashtag #imastory was all over the screen first, on a book that opened up for us like an enormous disclaimer. It might as well have said #iamcompletelymadeup or #iamtheficticiouswetdreamofanadvertisingexec. 

I nearly spat out my wine as I guffawed at the screen. But then I realised this wasn’t some kind of Rude Tube rundown of the most laughable adverts of the Hispanophone world, it was really an advert trying to sell bras. It was a woman who REALLY was supposed to be a current student, showing us her push-up Manuelas.

¿En Serio? You might well ask. But this advertising concept is too old, and this material too hackneyed, to get all angry young woman about it. It’s just white noise to my generation. We all know we live in a world where Italian lingerie companies don’t have to give a toss about the messaging they send out to young women, or to young men for that matter. What? They’re just #stories, y’all. Students wear lingerie, and yes, they might study for their finals in said lingerie, and yes they might damn well study in large warehouse spaces filled with books in their bras and knickers, and they would be PERFECTLY within their rights to do so, and without judgement. Haters gonna hate.

The main problem I have with this advert, really, is its ludicrousness. But hey, we’ve all seen worse. So maybe, if we just treat it with the same amount of respect that we’d allow a perfume advert with Brad Pitt spouting some nonsense about things being inevitable, or Keira Knightley showing us it is possible to pout intensely whilst driving a gondola or whatever it is she does in those Chanel ads, it’ll make young women who actually are students, and are really thinking, and actually reading, and might already know all about the male gaze, mainstream media’s scopophiliac, voyeuristic and narcissicistic tendencies, treat this ad like the ad execs’ fantasy it really is, and not go rushing out to buy overpriced bland lingerie at the expense of their next couple of jägerbombs, or their books, for that matter.

In fact, why not let’s all go braless in retaliation and squish a few pennies off Intimissimi’s end of year sales figures, in the meantime? You could choose to flounce around an abandoned warehouse space in your drawers, hashtagging it #nobraday as part of America’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or take @augustadt_iris’s great advice and schedule a mammogram instead. 

Coming Out, Standing Up and Being Counted

image credit: www.hannahnicklin.com

I have a secret. (Shh - it's this blog).

Ever since I began writing here in February 2009, I have done so under a pseudonym. I have shown it to maybe four or five of my friends and work colleagues, but I've never made my posts public on my facebook or my own twitter account. At first, that was mainly because I wasn't confident about my writing, but more recently, it's been about not wanting to be too public about my thoughts, especially as so many of them are about jacking it all in and leaving London behind. The blog was always intended to be a diary and an occasional account of events going on during a particularly turbulent time in my life, but more of a virtual notebook; a place to store my thoughts, archive them, and be able to look back on them. I certainly still don't really know whether this blog is a foodie thing or a self-indulgent ranty thing, or just an online space to store musings. But a few things are happening that make me want to publicise a little bit more, and address some issues I feel are important.

Firstly, work is totally bonkers at the moment. People are leaving and throwing their toys out of various prams all over the place. I am trying to remain somewhat indifferent to the upheaval because it fits in with my master plan to pack my shit up and leave in around 11 months' time to try finding sustainable work somewhere in France running a jam farm. But these relatively minor HR storms rage within a sector-wide squall - I work in higher education, you see.

image credit:www.globalhighered.wordpress.com

It's become increasingly clear to me that "this country" (as I write, I hear it being said in David Cameron's twattish little voice - shudder) has been, for the short term at least, monumentally buggered *polite term* by the Con-Dem government. All right, nothing new there; that's been going on since May. But specifically, I'm increasingly disillusioned with the prospect of talking excitedly about higher education to 17 and 18 year olds across the UK and EU this year knowing full well that they will be committing themselves, for the most part, to at least £27,000 worth of government- endorsed debt from next September onwards, not including their living costs. And that's my job, which makes things a bit tricky, really.

Thanks a bunch, Dave.

I feel like a bit of a fraud and a hypocrite, but at least part of my job is about trying to raise aspirations of young people who have the the ability to go to university but are facing barriers to progression. (It's also to help the university I work for increase their intake from as wide a variety of schools and backgrounds as possible.) But I don't yet know how we can really fix things to make university education more accessible to all, though. And I'm getting tired of feeling like we're all lying and just trying to make up the numbers to satisfy this government's guilty conscience.

But for the moment, here's what I'm doing. I'm trying to motivate a small team of people, keep my head above water, clear my own (relatively meagre) student debt, not lie to anyone (intentionally or not), get my bus commute down to under an hour a day, eat up all my greens, better my own personal best Scrabble high score of 420, and keep writing.

Oh, and given that influential people are leaving my workplace, I'm no longer worried about this blog being public anymore. You can find the real me on twitter here and here, and you can email me at the.bittersweet.cityAT gmailDOTcom. Holler at me and tell me what you think, or leave me comments and let's interact. And if you can, come and join me at this on March the 26th. It's important, for everyone, not just students.

By the way, I'm totally serious about the jam farm.

Bill's Produce Store/ Sabai/ Pompoko / Brighton

The Bitter: Lots of students (I'm only kidding, I love students!); the fact that this is my first non-London review

The Sweet: Three lovely eateries in 36 hours and a gorgeously sunny Spring day

7. All right, so they're not in London, but I thought they were worth reviewing

I love Brighton. It was where I wanted most to study at the age of 17 after a visit to Sussex University's rolling hills and because I had a distinct nose for anywhere or anything vaguely 'alternative'. It's a place that screams freedom - the 'screw you squares, I did a law degree because you made me, but gave it all up to work in a health food store and teach yoga on weekends' kind of freedom.

Now my cousin, S, studies there, and on a recent visit for work I took the opportunity to spend some time revisiting my own student days and admiring the town’s Laines, loonies, and the fine shops and restaurants that Brighton has to offer – as a working adult with a bit more than the dregs of my student loan to see me through.

First up was something of a Brighton institution: a shop, café and restaurant all in one – Bill’s Produce Store, on North Road.

It’s noteworthy for this blog in particular, because it feels like a little piece of East Dulwich in the town otherwise known as “London-on-Sea”. There are organic fruits and vegetables. There are lots of pretty jars of pricey, yet tempting sundries from around the globe. There's arborio rice in little sacks. There are yummy daddies (yes, it’s that fashion-forward) having lunch with their little cherubs in papooses. You can get a flat white there with not a hint of any disdainful glance from your server (I asked for one this morning in a Bristol coffee shop and was met with a dead-eyed stare). Look, it’s so London, I saw a yummy daddy with one of these there:

My cousin recommended it as a good place to take a family member who would undoubtedly pay for lunch. Smart cookie. The food was great, and our facially-pierced waiter was just the sweetest thing, calling us all 'madam' (there were four of us under 30 in our group), which went down pretty well. I had a smoked haddock pie with some cheesy mash on the top and a really fresh side salad. My cousin had eggs royale - basically eggs benedict with smoked salmon that actually garnered a resounding 'oooooh' from around the table when her eggs yolks burst out onto the toast underneath. Me? I don't like runny eggs much. Ah, well. That's what comes of having a microbiologist for a parent. I don't have any photos, sadly, but you can get a good idea of how it looks from this excellent post from An American in London, a cool blog I've just discovered. Sadly, she doesn't agree overall about Brighton's charms.

Next up, another good recommendation from cousin S for dinner - Sabai Thai Gastrobar. The name had me worried, as I pictured high stools, questionable music, expensive cocktails and weeny little spring rolls and satay skewers posing as dinner for birdy little stick-women. I was very pleasantly surprised. The restaurant did have a water feature, but was really tastefully done, and was packed to the rafters. We were lucky to get a table, and had to wait a while for our food, but the sweet, smiling waitress who was seemingly on her own that evening apologised, gave us lots of free prawn crackers and did her best to keep checking on us. I'd recommend it if you find yourself hungrily wandering by the Pavilion.

Lastly and possibly my favourite, we stopped for lunch at one of S's favourites - a student haunt that is as cheap and as cheerful as they come. Pompoko means a kind of dahlia, according to my friend Lo-Sal (this is not his real name), a quirky Spaniard who is studying Japanese Culture at Birkbeck. I simply had to take pictures for him, because it was right up his street. And mine. And apparently right up the street of most of Brighton's students. It was consistently busy, even at 4pm - snooze into your soup hour for most places.

What wasn't to like? The prices, the close-together-perfect-for-eavesdropping-tables, the quality of the food, the Japanese lucky cat on the counter, oh and did I mention the prices?! This lovely sesame prawn don with rice and chicken yakisoba were a little over £4 per dish, and were served hot and fresh within 5 minutes. Bliss.

Brighton, you have won me over again.

And I'm darned jealous of all those bloody students.