Last night he played to a sold out Union Chapel, and as he pointed out himself, this is high praise given he’s not released a record for night on five years. ‘Why do you keep coming?’ he asked.
I don’t know – there’s something uplifting about his songs, a gentleness of handling that makes him able to sing about profound feelings without seeming trite or disrespectful.

Anyway, the sound all went wrong. It’s not the first time I’ve seen Foy when technology has let him down. He decided to sing on, a cappella. And because we were actually a cappella, the acoustics were perfect to carry his voice. Even the drummer wasn’t massively put out, getting out an egg shaker that made the audience laugh at his ingenuity.

It did mean we couldn’t really hear his banter, and when he got wind of murmurings of discontent in the balcony, he climbed the stairs and performed up in the gods for us.

The truth is, I prefer Foy when it’s just him, his voice and his guitar, so in some ways I was glad he was forced to strip it back, although I appreciate the added value of backing singers, percussion and computer looping. When you’re singing raw songs, a raw voice unplugged does it fair justice. Or maybe I’m just being like all those music fans who always claim the band was better in the old days.

Regardless, technology may fail and audiences may murmur, but strong songs and heartfelt performers should stand in their own right. And in this instance, Foy definitely stood tall.

Nevertheless, having a gender balance in all things is still up for discussion. It came up during the Leveson inquiry this week (not sure how this links to transparency and accountability in the media), leading Ed Vaizey to join The Guardian newspaper in urging the BBC to get more women on the Today programme. Reforming the Today programme, of course, will fix everything – representation in Parliament, equal pay, the devastating impact of welfare reform on women and children – all of it can be resolved if Sarah Montague could just be given a new female BFF for the radio…

In the meantime, it’s been a grim old battle between the Commons and the Lords on the subject of welfare. I’m increasingly grateful for the obstreperous aristos, argumentative bishops and cantankerous ex-members of Parliament who don’t have anything to lose by asking the obvious question: if welfare is meant to be for the poor, why are we trying to pass a Bill that will not benefit them? In particular it’s women, children and the disabled or sick who will feel the cuts most. Whatever happened to the principle of caring for the widow, orphan, stranger and poor in your land?

Perhaps women are to blame, spending their time creating a women-only social network, instead of working out what really matters. I don’t massively like it when women are outnumbered by men, but I’m not a fan of women-only things either. It’s all too emotional. Not to undermine the value of female friendship, which is a remarkable and wonderful thing. Emily Rapp writes about the impact her female friends have had on her life very movingly, and I know I’m grateful for the companionship and wisdom of people like FF who stayed with me last weekend. We do need one another. We just happen to need men too. So could we concentrate on equality and stop being distracted by the internet, just for a few minutes?

With that in mind, and in the interests of providing gender balance, I thought I should give you a quick update on my world of beardy men too.

A small victory was won in favour of the rights of all bearded men who love Mickey Mouse everywhere, as Disney finally allowed their male staff to wear a beard. As long as it’s trimmed to a length of 1/4 inch, which is arguably more stubble than beard. Nevertheless it’s the small wins that lead to great victories.

If Josh Strauss were ever to leave South African rugby, he’d not find employment at Disney, sporting the fine, thick long beard (some might say a little too long?) as he does. @mikezimlister (who discusses the contents of this blog so frequently, I feel it’s only right he finally gets a mention) kindly suggested I start following South African rugby players on Twitter for their beardedness, and sent me this fine picture as an example of what I’ve been missing all this time.

The quest for equality, and for the perfect beard continues…

On Saturday evening we went for a wander around the Tate Modern, and happened upon Ai Weiwei’s Kui Hua Zi – a pile of individually made ceramic sunflower seeds, arranged in a perfectly conical pile. It’s possibly one of the highlights of the gallery’s current collection, and the room was busy with people wandering in to look.

But it struck me that every person, myself included, who walked in, turned their back immediately on the art they’d come to see to read the blurb on the wall. At one point every person in the room had their back to the art they’d come to look at.

As a child born at the start of the information age, where the desire to know and to understand is paramount, I wonder if I expect an instant explanation to everything I see. Wikipedia shuts down for a day in protest at proposed changes to US legislation and all the random answers to the daily inane questions I ask were suddenly lost to me, leaving me feeling disconnected, lost and vaguely unable to make sense of the world.

The expectation that information is and ought to be available, I feel, provides a common theme to much of last year’s protests and the sense of moral outrage expressed by people about MPs expenses, bank bailouts and bonuses, corruption in the police force, and phone hacking – we want the truth, we want to know all things, and we don’t see why, in a highly connected age, when everything is documented and logged on databases and spreadsheets, we can’t have access to all of that too. It’s a righteous quest for truth.

I have no problem with seeking the truth, especially in the face of injustice or crime.

But I wonder if our obsession with information is depriving us of mystery, and with it a sense of wonder. So much so that when we visit an art gallery to see what is obtuse, what is being expressed incoherently through the power of vision and experience rather than words, what is beautiful, skillful or wondrous, we lack the capacity to view the art without seeing it through the medium of information. I’m curious as to whether we only feel a sense of wonder at Ai Weiwei’s work because the writing on the board next to it tells us why and how to feel.

Beauty and wonder and mystery are in front of us, and we turn our backs to read 100 words that explain to us that we are surrounded by beauty, wonder and mystery. Then we try and feel them. Almost like we’ve become so used to being given information, and maybe told what to think, we’ve stopped looking for ourselves. And maybe we’ve stopped being able to see for ourselves too.

So what is it that changes a ticklist into that elusive but indefinable spark, the je ne sais quoi that makes one person seem so overwhelmingly attractive in comparison to another?

I think I may know my answer:

A strong beard

See exhibit A, sent to me from my good friend FF, who knows me very well and, so it would follow, has a good sense of my ideal man, earlier this week:

I think this guy is perfect for you!

This is based entirely, I think, on his most excellent facial hair (feel free to chip in with another reason here FF if I’m wrong). She’s not wrong. If I were scouring an internet dating site and came across this image, I’d definitely be poking/winking/smiling/whatever until I got a response.

If there were to be a new challenge for 2012 (which there isn’t so far, and I’m still open to all suggestions) perhaps the Quest to find the Perfect Beard could be it.

Or if you’ve not got time – here’s her conclusion, which will give you the general gist:

“All that I’m trying to say, ladies, is stop trying to frighten me; make me feel empowered. Speak to me like I can make my own decisions, and don’t demean the difficulties I may be having finding a guy who I think is worth my time and energy. Marriage is a rapidly-changing institution. Let’s discuss how it can be molded to fit our rising status, rather than trying to jam ourselves into some outdated ideal.

“Meanwhile, leave me a little room for my fantasies and my fairy tales. If I don’t dream of the occasional miracle, the found glass slipper, the kiss that awakens me from my slumber, how do you expect me to make it through the drudgery of life?”

Thanks RM for the link.

You don’t need to be a world-renowned psychologist to know that girls can be mean. Little girls fall out with each other and make new best friends every day. Teenage girls snipe about each other’s looks behind each other’s backs and swipe boyfriends from each other. And grown women gossip.

We’re perpetually comparing ourselves with one another, which means, when we’re at our worst, we justify ourselves by putting each other down.

We’re so good at it, that we can do it super-subtly. Sometimes we don’t realise how rotten other women are making us feel with their words, and bravely take their words on the chin, even incorporating their negativity into our life’s philosophy.

Tracy McMillan’s latest offering on the Huffington Post is a good example of this: Why You’re Not Married.

The inference is that this article will be helpful to read. That it will help women to find their soulmate, to stop fiddling around and selling themselves short and just, for crying out loud, settle down, have babies, stop upsetting the social order by being older than 27 and not being married, and be normal.

But what she says is brutal! Mean mean mean mean mean.

‘You’re selfish’ she says. ‘You’re shallow’. She’s writing mean things on purpose to catch our attention but single women are bombarded with articles about why they’re not married yet enough to have a low opinion of themselves and their relationship track record without being told mean things in the name of reverse psychology.

You don’t get men writing articles about how inadequate men are at finding love or getting involved in relationships. Men don’t write articles that tell their fellow gender-mates that they’re shallow, selfish or liars. Neither do they tell one another that they ought to have been married years earlier but they were too picky, or too empowered in their career, or [insert oft-repeated reason for singleness of your choice here]

I would like one of two things to happen.
Either I’d like men to start writing the kind of thinly veiled as advice abuse to each other, so I know that they have the same over-analytical paranoias.
Or I’d like women to please stop writing articles like these.

Preferably the latter. (Please)

Marina Hyde had a bit of a rant in her Guardian column about female British athletes being describing as ‘sexy celestial’ in the Daily Mail and dressed in sheer floaty frocks for Harper’s Bazaar. Not exactly sure what the crime is here, or if it’s the worst crime in the history of feminism ever, but one for the archive nevertheless.

Another less than earth-shattering feminist discussion has kicked off en France where the town of Cesson-Sevigne banned the use of the title Madamoiselle, according to the BBC. From now on females in the town will be addressed as Madame, regardless of age. Turns out the Germans ditched Fraulein in the 70s, evidently with very little fanfare. Something I plan to remind people of whenever I get a raised eyebrow for choosing Ms. As I told a friend the other week, I feel a little bit too old to be a Miss these days. What would Simone de Beauvoir make of all this I wonder?

Finally, for this week at any rate, this short video has had more than a million hits since it was uploaded a few days ago and should be compulsory viewing for all teenaged girls at least, and probably all women. Although I will confess one of my first thoughts was to find out where the ‘liquify’ tool is on Photoshop and learn to use it. Does that make me less of a feminist??

Have a good weekend.

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

I don’t need to make resolutions because the past few years my general aims have always been the same:

1. Lose half a stone
2. Pay off my debts
3. Meet the love of my life
4. Bag the job of my dreams
5. Travel

I don’t need to state them overtly – these are the desires that pester my psyche all the time, especially when I’m thinking about my flab rolls as I eat a chocolate biscuit, or am counting down the days til I get paid, or am on the 155 bus to Elephant and Castle instead of travelling business class to an exotic location.

Because they’re too big or too vague, I lack the resolve to bring them about (although as PJ pointed out only too rightly number 3 is hard to ‘achieve’, quoting me back at me. Thanks for that).

If there’s a resolution to be made, it’s to be more resolute. This lack of resolve, I have resolved, has to stop.

Number 1 should be broken down into eating more healthily, living a less sedentary life, committing to doing yoga, and ceasing and desisting from obsessing about what I eat and enjoying my body for what it is. All typed with leftover German Christmas cake in hand. Ah well. I’ll start tomorrow.

Number 2 means making myself actually sit down and do some maths (groans, holds head, takes deep breath and gets out the calculator), set up some direct debits and take myself firmly in hand. I think it might also be an excuse to get out the sewing machine and make some things. See, there’s always two sides to that austerity coin.

Numbers 3 and 4 I’ll need to think some more about. Even without the structure of a challenge, I plan to keep up the dating. Working out what the job of my dreams is might be a good start to number 4.

And as for number 5. Well I always make that happen somehow. Good to know I’m not lacking in resolve entirely.

I don’t mind waking up earlyish, but this is silly. Worse still when you know it’s not going to get light for another four hours. I need a plan to use the time constructively. Thank goodness the Today programme starts at 6am…

In the meantime, the soundtrack to unwanted pre-5 am wakefulness has to be Simon and Garfunkel…

I did a bit of shopping, a bit of mooching, a bit of drinking really good coffee, thinking my thoughts, soaking up my last dregs of warm weather before meeting up with some random relatives.
I reckon although there’s only four million people in New Zealand, everyone in the UK has a random relative there, waiting to be looked up, brought up to speed with the intricacies of how you’re related, who is married to whom and family folklore that you’ve both missed.

Wellington is known for its wind, but my second day in the city was uncharacteristically still, warm and even a bit muggy. We picniced in the Botanic Gardens, wandered along the wharf and stopped for late afternoon glasses of wine.

M cooked an indoor barbecue and then S and I put on dresses and went out. ‘I want you to see New Zealand with people in it,’ S said. She was right. Courtney Place at night was the busiest I have seen anywhere in my entire trip. We drank cocktails in The Library and savoured the last night of my visit.

My last day finally arrived, and with it, torrential and incessant rain. The spell was broken. Time for me to come home.