I don’t feel as paranoid about my wordcount as I did back in November, and it’s possible, thinking back that I was looking for a punchy number 10 to end this list, not knowing that I was going to expand upon the list as an exercise in blogging, but I did, and here we are at the end.  What have I learnt?  I have learnt that most of the things I feel judged for on Twitter are of course things I feel insecure about in one way or another, Twitter is a mirror, it’s Jung or something.  I have also learnt that blogging, much like all kinds of writing, is a joy once you carve out the time but carving out the time is an absolute bitch.  I am in awe of those of you who blog every day.  I will continue to hone my non-fiction voice but this list, these things that were on my mind back in November, are not what I really have to say.  I might need to dig a little deeper for that.

I will say this.  Writing is a wonderful thing to do, and writing fiction is a privilege, but there is something very different, and more daunting, about trying to be yourself and publishing instantly, not simply creating a collection of compelling characters through made up, carefully tweaked words.

Perhaps I need an alter-ego.  *muses*

Meanwhile, why not buy my book?  I am sure my publishers would love me to push it here instead of writing more non-fiction words and not revising my next novel.

Summer of Secrets, it’s fabulous.

I know what this is now.  I looked it up. It’s not even an action is it?  It’s shorthand.  Modified Tweet.  Like a retweet (RT) but you’ve given it a polish.  I always thought it meant, wait for it, Mention  I KNOW.  I didn’t say it made sense.  Slightly disappointed that it translates into little more than a cut and paste.

I recently discovered HT means Hat Tip, or possibly Heard Through, the uncertainty over which goes some way to illustrating my point that nobody knows much of anything for sure.

This week I also learnt ngl (not gonna lie) and jsyk (just so you know) and I didn’t even need anyone to teach me, this is the kind of shorthand I can pick up from context.  I am down with the kids.  Totes.

When Lucy-Ann Holmes kicked off the No More Page 3 campaign I was impressed by her drive, her support and her coverage.  The Sun was the first newspaper I bought with my own money and even at university I was still flitting around chirping ‘No Sun, No Fun!’ like a galah.  As a youngster Suzanne Mizzi was my favourite Page 3 girl, mostly I suspect because her name had all those ‘Z’s in it, I was sad when she died in 2011.

I stopped buying The Sun in 2000, when my political awakening coincided with their name-and-shame campaign.  It had nothing to do with Page 3.  Since then there has been an explosion in mens’ magazines and internet access to porn, but the Page 3 girl is still there (always smiling, never pouting).  No More Page 3 are targeting the institution as some kind of gateway porn.  A recent casting call for the newspaper stated ‘Page 3 girls are slim without being skinny and fit and toned, they are all over 18 years of age and have natural boobs.’  I can live with that.

As for ‘News in Briefs’ where the model ‘comments’ on current events but doesn’t write it herself, I feel like we are supposed to be complicit in that, it’s a weak attempt at humour.  See?  It’s not just tits.  It was once seaside postcard knob gags in that caption, and the breasts used to be silicone, this to me is positive action. Beauty will always be valued, sex will always be valued, they are valuable things, but instead of marriage being the only possible income a woman can make from her beauty she can work hard for the money, and to tell her otherwise echoes the patriarchy that the feminist cause kicks against.  I will enjoy explaining that to my daughter if she inadvertently spots a picture of Lacey Banghard (Real. Name.) on a bus one day.  Men objectify women for varying reasons and removing Page 3 won’t change anything.

It has been quite a year for freedom of the press, and it quickly became clear that imposing moral arguments on editorial policy – however well intentioned – is a loser’s game unless you change the law. Boobs aren’t news, but they are fun for some and that is what The Sun is unashamedly about.

But here’s the link for No More Page 3 again so you can make up your own mind.

Number seven on my list of Things I Feel Judged for on Twitter.

When I first joined Twitter someone told me, and I forget who, that it was all pictures of cats and food, and even though this is obviously not the case the scorn of this person has stayed with me, haunted me, and stopped me posting either.  Which is ridiculous when you consider that I can’t even remember who said it.  (It was on facebook.  Facebook!  Hah!)

I am not a cat person, but I am a foodie, I like to cook even more than I like to eat, and it is a skill I enjoy improving upon year on year.  I think I have only posted one photo of food on Twitter before.  This one.  So here is my day in food.

Asian Lamb Salad, from Nigella Express. Delicious.

Pink cakes designed by Claudia Jean. Kind of vile. But, you know, fun.

You are never too young to learn how to cook risotto.

My first Tarte Tatin (to use up the pastry from the ricotta thingies) Wow. So easy. Okay, so it's not pretty, but it tasted glorious.

I will spare you the leftover party sandwiches dipped in French’s mustard I just had for my breakfast.

I don’t think I have ever tweeted a celebrity before, if I have I can’t remember, but I have sent three tweets to Simon Cowell. *blushes*  I can’t help myself.

When I was writing my first novel I kept a picture of Simon Cowell above my laptop and when I wrote about fireworks with first kisses, or teenage heartbreak and heroism, happy endings and terrible accidcents, I would not hold back. Simon Cowell, I thought, would not hold back on drama for the sake of realism.  After the book was published I carried it around London for months in case I met him, then I could tell him the story, and we’d become BFFs.  (I don’t carry it around any more so it would be just my luck to bump into him now, somewhere on the nursery run probably, or in the woods.)

He continues to impress me.  This season on X Factor USA he has two new judges, Demi Lovato and Britney Spears, young stars who once felt so out of control they demonstrated disregard for normal behaviour, shaved things and punched things, and effectively became young stars with excess baggage.  It hasn’t stopped Cowell giving them a job.  You sense that if he had something for Lindsay Lohan, she’d be in like a bullet.  Simon adores Demi but will lean across her to see Britney thinks.  He is fascinated by Britney.  She carries herself with the jaded ennui of a global superstar.  She has been famous longer than he has.  I constuct these psychological motivations for his actions in my head, it’s part of my obsession.  I wish I had created him as a character.

Simon is new to Twitter, and a nightowl, he stays up late to conference call with the UK.  That’s his excuse.  Most of his many, many replies are people begging for a follow, which is a thing I didn’t know people did until I started Twitter stalking Simon Cowell.  Follow me, Simon.  Stop messing with your face.  And go with Candyman for Fifth Harmony in the semi-final.

Where was I?  This one feels like it should be easy to explain.  *looks down at outfit*  Generally I don’t buy clothes until the ones I already have sprout too many holes to mend.  I dislike shopping, I tend to have a very fixed idea of what I want to purchase (eg, denim skirt, any colour, not too heavy, long enough to wear without tights in summer.  Or white linen kaftan, loose weave, no sequins) and I can scan a shop fairly quickly and sense whether or not they have it.  Between the ages of 22 and 32 I wore indigo jeans and a black top every day, except in summer when I wore combats or the monochrome skirt from H&M that someone once thought was from Prada.  At 32 I started pro-creating and working from home and now I generally only get dressed to leave the house and even then I can get away with all sorts of sins if I wear my big black padded coat.  I like winter.

I follow a lot of authors on Twitter and their professional lives, like mine, are an odd combination of 99% bunker life fuelled by tea and toast, punctuated with meeting fantastic people in smart places.  Rarely does anyone rave about the world’s comfiest leggings for tall women, but there is an enduring obsession with shoes.  My feet went up an entire shoe size when I was pregnant, I have one pair of boots and ten pairs of shoes that give me blisters. I can’t get involved in that side of Twitter because I feel a little lost when I get dressed in the morning (clean? sold) and wonder if my years working in grungy Soho in the era of grunge have left me broken.

Nevertheless, I am going to get into it.  I am experimenting with my hair, reorganising my wardrobe, trying to reconcile the way I dress indoors for my own amusement (leggings, tutu, glitter) with the way I present myself to the world.  I have bought a sewing machine to make some basic alterations and learn how to recreate fits that flatter me. I am going to a vintage clothing sale in Shipston on Saturday.  The late, great Isabella Blow once said that her style icon was ‘anyone who makes a bloody effort’.  I feel like I should at least try.

The only full length mirror in the house is in the bedroom of a three year old boy.

I correct my typos on Twitter.  I wish I never made any because if I do I always think “Alison, if you can’t even successfully revise a 140 character tweet before delivering it how do you think you’re going to cope with a 100,000 word novel, hmm, hmm?”  And then I realise I am feeding my own self-doubt using a voice not unlike my beloved mother’s at her most critical, I correct the tweet, and I try to move on.

Third on my list of Things I Feel Judged for on Twitter is the power of pink.  In case you haven’t noticed I am blogging it a bit more.  I didn’t originally plan that when I wrote my list but it’s a discipline I have wanted to build into my writing days, because I find I like non-fiction more and more, so here I am.  Some of these posts are more difficult for me to articulate than others (there’s a doozy waiting down the list) and I am nervous about writing things like this and putting them out in the world but like Tavi says on feminism in this fantastic TED talk, we’re all just figuring it out.

As mother to a little girl who just turned five there is no shortage of pink in our house.  I remember the day she announced that her favourite colour was pink. I wasn’t overjoyed at this predictable choice from my unique star and I blamed peer pressure and her recent introduction to nursery, I tried to play it down and steer her elsewhere. But very quickly I realised my anti-pink sentiment was unfair and ill-considered.  Pink is a beautiful colour, the colour of the sky, the colour of a blush, the colour of my favourite restaurant in Mexico.

As well as pink my daughter likes climbing, mud and playing doctor.  She prefers Andy’s Wild Adventures to Angelina Ballerina, but if what she wanted to do was stick hot pink flower petals on pale pink tissue paper all day with her Barbie pals listening to Disney classics, then I don’t see myself telling her there is anything wrong, and lesser somehow, shameful almost, about her preferences. Just as if she decides to be a stay at home mother or a manicurist then I would try my best to support that and contain my anguish that my dreams for her to be a marine biologist slash tennis pro didn’t work out.

Ascribing the idea that pink stinks and that more traditionally masculine toys, colours or professions are where truly ambitious females should be directing their sights seems to me far more damaging to a little girl’s self-esteem than introducing her to a wide range of colourful experience and encouraging an interest where an interest is shown. By constantly knocking or rejecting pink I realised that I was teaching my daughter she was wrong, and that her tribe was wrong, and that Angelina Ballerina was not good enough.  Not a very empowering message.  It reminds me of the school of thought for children around sweets, or alcohol for that matter, that restricting access only increases the desire.  As I have drastically dialled down the anti-pink voice she has become far less attached to the colour.

Here’s correspondence from a little girl with a practical gender issue with the toymakers, taking on Guess Who? for discrimination, I applaud this girl, but remain ambivalent about drawing attention to lazy marketing shorthand on the surface of the issue.   Women are strong and powerful, and claim pink as the symbol of that strength, a symbol we see in millions of pink ribbons for breast cancer care.

(I maintain this Pinterest page of pretty pink things because I like to remind myself I am a woman without using a handmirror)

Next on my list of Things I Feel Judged for on Twitter.

In the beginning I tried to limit my following number to 100.  I could keep a handle on 100 people, I could read most of the articles they linked to, I could have a sensible list of work people, trade press, trash, ard news, friends in real life, plus a few random adventurers and far-flung souls like @bumfuzzle to keep me dreaming.  My current number is 134 (which also happens to be the number of the house I grew up in #randomfact) and I just don’t know who to cull. I miss people when I unfollow them.  But I didn’t actually feel bad until a few days ago a friend of mine was gutted that she had been followed and then quite quickly unfollowed by a journalist she admired (professionally if not politically) and tried to determine his motivation.  Trust me, if I do that to you it’s not that I don’t want to follow you it’s just that I don’t understand the apps that let you organise your lists and I can’t figure out how these people who follow thousands of people (for the record, I don’t follow back) gain any sort of real satisfaction from their timeline.  Twitter is more than just a numbers game.  Isn’t it?  It is possible I am over-thinking this. If I unfollow you I apologise, but I’m a working mother boo-boo, I don’t have that kind of time.

Of course I love libraries, I love second-hand bookshops and exchanges, I always have. Of course I love independent bookshops.  There’s a sweet little bookshop for sale in the next village to us if you love them too – (just reduced to 157k, with flat above!)  But I do use Amazon more than any other retail site. Twitter summed it up for me yesterday: On Amazon you find the book you want; in a bookshop you find the book you didn’t know you wanted.  However, sometimes I just want a specific book, preferably without having to put my fit-for-public clothes on.  Yesterday I got an email saying that my copy of The Ice Age by Kristin Reed was on the way and I felt a thrill because I’ve been wanting to read it for a while but held back because I am writing.  I didn’t dash to Twitter, even though those kind of childish thrills usually make it into my *scintillating* timeline, because I realise that ‘Your Amazon order has been despatched’ isn’t going to win friends right now.

Amazon has revolutionized the book industry. The prospect of a one publisher/one retailer marketplace is an unknown worst case scenario. But there is always competition.  Looking back a few years, if the major players in the music industry had seen the internet in a positive way and spent time developing a web based payment mechanism for music rather than suing their customer base they would never have had to make space for Apple at the big table. There is always room at the top.

Amazon pays no tax in the UK.  Margaret Hodge, presiding over the hearings, snapped at their representative as he failed to answer the simplest questions about their systematic abuse of the system. ‘It’s not on,’ and I agree with her. But it is lawful. Individuals and companies of all sizes do a similar dance with the tax man each year.  Should the ethics of Starbucks be held to higher account because of their profit margin?  (which in the UK is zero GBP by the way *rolls eyes*) If Amazon stop discounting in the UK, effectively passing the tax burden to the consumer because their current business model relies on tax avoidance, then I will probably continue to one-click my way into the red because their customer service is outstanding.

I used to buy from the Book Depository but in July last year Amazon swallowed them up.  I suppose now I should be over at Waterstones, or out in the world, but I end up buying from Amazon because it’s right there and it’s simple and they have everything.  The same reason I shop at Tesco’s more than any other supermarket.  Don’t hate me.