Cocktail, Straight Ahead!

There are things that every girl with a love of a pair of heels should know.  One of those things is don't organise a night out in January, because snow tends to argue with heels.  Snow usually wins.

This weekend however I was in a head to head with snow, as I was going on a long arranged night out in Manchester, staying over at the Premier Inn.  This had been booked and arranged for months, so snow was just going to have to reach a compromise.

After a somewhat fraught journey on the bus over to Manchester, with my friend and I praying that the bus wasn't going to slide in the ice on the motorway, we finally arrived at the Premier Inn.  After a much needed glass of wine after check in we were restored to happy and excited for the night ahead.

I was going to take pictures of the room but let's face it, most of us have been to or seen pictures of the rooms.  Clean, spacious, comfortable bed.  The usual.  The only trouble we could foresee in our room was that the beds were on wheels, visions of bed dodgems on the return home came to mind.

After a recommendation from a friend, we decided that The Alchemist was going to be our starting point as I had heard rave reviews about the cocktails, and the fact that they had a 50% off food offer was a definate bonus. 

I would definately recommend going, after sharing a bottle of wine, one cocktail, a shared platter and a main course each, coming away having only spent £20.00 (including a decent tip) is a rare thing indeed. 

I didn't manage to take too many photographs on the night, and none of me all dressed up, but here are a few of what I was wearing, and some of the cocktails we indulged in!

The only pic I have of my dress, dotted pink with a peplum!

An English Cherry Sour

The obligatory Cosmopolitan - buy one get one free!

A Bubblegum Daiquiri, with popping candy!

Mojito - fresh mint or no dice

Stop the Cull

I’m not the type of person that can say silent when something is happening that I disagree with.  I have to speak, take action, do something.  I am not a part of the silent majority.  I believe that in order to invoke change, you need to do something about it.  Staying silent gets you nowhere.

Some may say what can one person do?  What change can you hope to effect on your own?  Well, on my own, not much, but in a collective of similar minds, a lot. 

The change I want to effect is to quash the badger cull which is due to take effect in June 2013.  For those who aren’t aware, the Government originally planned the cull last year, in an effort to bring TB under control.

After over 150,000 signed a petition against the cull, scientists confirmed that a badger cull would not help matters and indeed would make it worse, the MPs voted and with a majority of 147 to 28 voting against the cull.

 

Despite all of this, the Goverment has now done an aboutface and rescheduled the cull.

I can’t help but think that the badger is merely the scapegoat for the fox.  Foxhunting is now illegal and Mr Cameron’s friends need something to shoot.  Why when faced with public opinion, it’s own MPs voting against and the scientific community asking that this cull be stopped, is it still going ahead?

I, like many many others have posted the E-Petition link on Twitter, on Facebook, and now I add it to this blog.  There are nearly 170,000 signatures now on the petition.  Don’t look at it as “There are enough people on there that have signed, I won’t bother”.  That is exactly the same as if you had looked at the petition at it’s inception and said “There are only a couple of signatures, I won’t bother”.

Please bother, please sign, please don’t be a part of the silent collective that watch as things happen. 

For more information: see here

 

You'll miss us when we are gone

Hate isn't Attractive

Now, I know that if you are going to read an article, and I use the term article loosely, on MailOnline, you are opening a can of worms. 

This post however really really made me mad, not for the contents of the article, but by the comments made by the general public.

 

So, what the article about?  Essentially featuring a photograph of three plus size girls, two of whom I follow on Twitter @CallieThorpe and @fullerfigurefullerbust  The article was talking about fashion, how much of it was available to the plus sized market and speaking about the fashion blogs run the girls in question.

 

The girls featured came across as confident, sassy and sure in who they were and what they thought.   If only we all could feel like that!  How many women do you know who constantly bemoan their figure, who are underconfident, shy and hide themselves away?  These women, whether plus sized, skinny, ten foot tall or whatever should be applauded. 

 

I moved on to the comments section however and what I read there truly appalled me.  There is so hatred out there.  I won't repeat the comments.  Although some were positive, a lot ranged from pure insult to accusing the women in the article of encouraging obesity and giving their children the wrong idea of how you should look.

Most figures suggest that the majority of trolls are men, and teenagers.  This did not appear to be the case here.  The majority was women.

So here's what I think.  We should feel sorry for the people who commented, feel really sorry for them.  They are unhappy people.

If you are happy in your life, if you are happy in the way you look, if you are confident and secure in yourself, you have no need to insult others.  What I see behind the comments are people who are insecure, unhappy with the way they look, be it size 22 or size 12, large nose or small nose, large breasts or small breasts.  They feel the need to disparage others as they cannot force themselves to look at what the real problem is, themselves.

The women in the article show women how we actually should be, confident, happy, self secure and out in the world.  I want to be a woman like that.