Where is Rowena?

Welcome, once again, to the main event on the musical calendar. You may have noticed that I've taken a brief hiatus from blogging in 2018, mostly due to my inherent laziness, but what better way to kick off the blogging year than with my beloved (I assume) Eurovision live blog? As always, I have refrained from watching any of the entries in advance so that my reactions are completely spontaneous. I think there is a comment function on the liveblog tool, so if you can work out how to use it then feel free to join in! Stay tuned for memes, gifs, devastating music critiques, and no mean-spirited mockery whatsoever.

Aside from a few years in the early 2000s in which I harangued my mother to buy me a novelty red nose from Sainsbury's, which I wore twice before discarding it for being desperately uncomfortable, I have largely ignored Comic Relief, mostly because the BBC has a habit of producing and broadcasting 'comedies' that are excruciatingly unfunny. This year, however, the BBC commissioned a (mercifully) short sequel to Love Actually as part of the so-called fun, which I can only interpret as an aggressive act of revenge against me personally for never watching anything they show apart from Eurovision.

At first I briefly considered petitioning Ofcom to have the thing banned, but I decided that this was unfair. Plenty of people enjoy Love Actually as a staple of the Christmas period, and they are perfectly entitled to do so. I love plenty of things that can be objectively considered terrible, after all.  I was also out of the country on the day itself and therefore was not forced to watch it.

"Be the change you want to see in the world," said someone who, in reality, almost certainly was not Mahatma Gandhi. Frequent misattribution aside, it's a solid piece of advice, and one that I intend to follow in this instance. So instead of telling you not to watch Love Actually 2, instead of complaining to the BBC for making it, instead of posting bitchy tweets throughout it, I am going to suggest improvements upon it. If Richard Curtis or any other purveyors of romantic comedy would like to hire me as a script consultant on any of their future pieces then by all means get in touch.

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Former prime minister David sits dejectedly at the breakfast table, unable to look away from the television. It's showing BBC Breakfast; Charlie's presenting today. David stares at the screen while absently stirring his coffee, ears half tuned in, listening only for the sound of his own name.

There was a time when David dreaded being mentioned in the media. The weeks following his ill-advised referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, which backfired spectacularly. The vote of no confidence that was eventually called in his government. One of his senior ministers winning the party leadership unopposed and, of course, not giving him a place in the Cabinet. People talked about him then. They were vicious. They were mocking. Not just about the referendum and the collapse of his government – nothing was off-limits for these people. They even made fun of his hair.

Now nobody's talked about him for months. It's almost worse. He starts to miss the insults, the Steve Bell cartoons in which his head was drawn as freakishly large and shiny, like a sanded-down asteroid. He was once referred to as the 'worst prime minister Britain had ever had'. Now it looks like his successor is doing an even worse job. It's not like he was exactly proud of the title, but the alternative is to be forgotten, reduced to a brief endnote in the A-Level history textbooks of 2050.

Natalie walks briskly into the kitchen, already dressed for work. David looks up as she passes between him and the television, a hopeful smile forming on his face, but she doesn't look him in the eye. She never looks him in the eye anymore.

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Jamie sits in his solicitor's office. Aurélia is late. She's always late. Such is the Mediterranean temperament. He always tried to focus on her positive qualities rather than her appalling timekeeping. The generosity of soul, the fiery impulsiveness, the seemingly endless compassion. These are the things Jamie tells people he fell in love with her for, not that she was pretty and helpful, the latter quality of which was necessary for her continued employment.

You can have all of those things and still be punctual, though, Jamie thinks irritably.

Twenty minutes later she finally arrives. She looks effortlessly beautiful in a T-shirt, plain jeans, and shabby old boots. He knows she doesn't have any makeup on and yet her skin is glowing. She could have made a bit of an effort, considering the formality of the situation. But still beautiful.

The solicitor is young and fairly recently qualified, but his manner is professional and his knowledge of their case thorough. It's fairly open and shut. The pair simply do not get along anymore. If Jamie is completely honest with himself, it is debatable whether they ever got along in the first place. She uses words like 'grumpy' and 'pretentious' when speaking about him, and states that his relationship history made him jealous and distrusting of her male friendships. He is just thankful that she isn't interested in any of his assets. She simply wants to return to France, to her family, to nice weather, to the life she gave up to marry a man she barely knew anything about.

"Thank God there are no kids," the solicitor later says to his colleague over coffee. "Makes the whole thing a lot easier to deal with."

"What's the official reason?" his colleague asks.

"Irreconcilable differences. Turns out it's probably a good idea to have a conversation or two with someone before you agree to marry them."

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"Pete," says Juliet tentatively, walking into the living room where her husband is sitting in front of Netflix. "You, er, you haven't spoken to Mark recently, have you?"

They don't hang out with Mark anymore. Obviously.  For the sake of avoiding putting mutual friends in awkward positions, Peter maintain a chilly civility with him, but they haven't spoken more than three consecutive sentences to each other in several years. But recently a letter came through the door in handwriting that Juliet recognised, burned into her limbic system forever from those bloody cards. Peter never shared the contents of the letters with her, and she didn't feel it appropriate to ask.

Peter turns to her, a thoughtful but not angry expression on his face. "I haven't spoken to him, no," he says, "but he wrote me quite a nice letter a few weeks ago, apologising for, y'know, coming on to my wife." Juliet feels her face heat up a little. "He said a lot of stuff, actually. For the first time, I actually believe him that he regrets it. He seems to have made a real effort to change and show that he valued our friendship and misses me. I don't know if I'm going to talk to him again, but I appreciated the gesture. Why do you ask?"

Juliet swallows. "Well, I don't think you should. You know I put some photos from Bali on Instagram the other day?" She presents her phone to him. "He's gone through and liked every single one where I'm wearing a bikini."

Peter rolls his eyes and turns back to the TV.

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Billy Mack died unexpectedly in 2016, just like everyone else you love.

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"I'm sorry, Mr Frissell," says Dr Andrews in a pleasantly lilting mid-western accent that could have been designed to soften the blow of bad news, "but you have tertiary syphilis." 

Colin blanches. "Bloody hell." The comically exaggerated British idioms he adopted as an affectation to attract American women have crept into his natural speech patterns over the years. If only he had been more selective in whom he attracted and how he protected himself once he'd attracted them. "Is there anything you can do?"

"At this stage we can't do much about the damage that's already occured," explains the doctor, "but with large doses of intravenous penicillin we should be able to limit further progression. You can discuss payment plans for the treatment with the receptionist."

Thanks to President Trump's repeal of Obamacare, Colin has no health insurance.

Colin suffers cardiovascular failure some months later. There were no mourners.

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Karen and Harry put a reasonable amount of time and energy into working through their issues, attended couple's counselling, and became better, more emotionally healthy people for their efforts. Harry then died unexpectedly in 2016, just like everyone else you love.




Main image credit: wintersoul1

In some respects I consider myself a pretty brave person. I volunteered to be the first aider at my old job. My tool of choice for body-hair removal is an epilator. I have told at least five Italians that I hate coffee. In spite of these irrefutable acts of courage, however, I must admit that I do experience fear on a regular basis. Halloween, simultaneously a celebration and a mockery of all things scary, would seem to be the ideal forum in which to express those fears. Let's be honest, though; if you're reading this blog you probably don't find witches, ghosts, or Frankenstein's monsters particularly scary. Sure, you might jump out of your skin at a horror film now and again, but is anyone over the age of twelve being kept awake at night by thoughts of Count Dracula? I expect not.

Many of us still have fears in our twenties and beyond, and many of us don't know how to deal with these fears because society has left us emotionally unequipped to do so. I propose that the first step in doing so is to incorporate them into our Halloween costumes, and, to start off what I have no doubt will become the accepted Halloween practice across the world in a couple of years, here are some things that I find legitimately terrifying that you can dress up as this Halloween.

Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump

According to a statistic that I just made up, around sixty per cent of people in monogamous relationships are only in them so they can wear a couple's costume at Halloween. Couple's costumes are great because you can put much less effort in than if you're dressing up solo but still look like you tried. Literature, film, and folklore have brought us hundreds of creepy couples to choose from, but, as much as we all love Gomez and Morticia Addams, they can't cause you to wake up sweating in the night quite like Donald and Jong-un and the threat of nuclear apocalypse that accompanies them and their total unsuitability for being heads of state.

What you'll need: The key to this costume is truly terrible hair. One looks like a Shoreditch hipster channelling a Puritan nine-year-old, and the other looks like a toupee made of blonde gas. Once you have the hair sorted you can pretty much throw on a suit and you'll be convincing. Please note that any kind of Asian-face make-up is absolutely not acceptable. Painting yourself orange to mimic the unique luminosity of Trump's skin, however, is.

As well as a world-renowned academic institution, University of Bristol is a great place to make friends. I met many of my favourite people there, and I still speak to most of them regularly two years after graduating. However, adult life is a transformative experience, and the dynamics will inevitably change as you all begin to grow from irresponsible, immature, often-drunk students to slightly more responsible, slightly less immature, still-drunk-quite-often-but-less-frequently-because-my-God-the-hangovers-are-so-bad-now adults. With this in mind, I have created a comprehensive list of who will make up your university friendship group two years after you all graduate. Behold your future:

The one who stayed in the town you all studied in

This person resisted the pull of London and has remained in your university city, still going to the same bars and still living in the same area that you all did as students. They seem happy. They are not. Secretly, they are bitter that you've all left them behind and desperate to recapture your student glory days together; you can tell because your interactions mostly consist of them sending you links to various big club nights to try and entice you into coming back and visiting. They say they stuck around for the job prospects and because London is too big and expensive, but the truth is that they aren't ready to face up to being a grown-up yet and are clinging to the memory of being a carefree student in a futile attempt to hold back the indomitable tide of ageing and certain death.

The one who's saving up to buy a house

You know the one that's saving up to buy a house because all they talk about is how they're saving up to buy a house. Every conversation is an opportunity for them to tell you how much they've got in their Help to Buy ISA and how much you could have in one too if you gave up every single thing that makes you happy. Still, you may pity them now that they're living with their parents and never go on holiday, or even to the pub, but you'll regret wasting your twenties on gaining independence and having fun when you're still renting in the city at age thirty and they're living it up in their very own two-bedroom semi in rural Derbyshire.

The one doing the grad scheme with the £35k starting salary

At first this is exciting. Zara becomes a beacon of hope for us all. Amazing, successful Zara, who only got a 2:1 just like you, who definitely didn't do as many extracurriculars at uni as you did. If she can do it, so can you. She is an inspiration. She is also generous, covering cab fares and even treating you to the occasional meal out. You love Zara. You are happy for Zara.

The months go by, and the happiness begins to shrivel into resentment. You can't join her for her birthday because she's having it at some ridiculously expensive bar-slash-club in central London where entry alone is a week's rent. She used to like your lentil dhal when you lived together, but now every time she visits she insists on going out for food – and not just anywhere, either, but 'somewhere nice'. You've had to hide her from your Facebook feed because she keeps going on holiday to places you not only can't afford but may never be able to afford. As you do so you feel a sharp pang of spite. Is she really that keen to share her photographs, you think, hovering over 'I don't want to see this' and aggressively jabbing your finger into the mouse, or is she just being smug? It's not like she's got a fancy camera; they're just taken on her iPhone. They're not even that good. Look, she's cut that person's feet off in that one.

This is the turning point. You hate Zara now. The class war is real, and your friendship is but another of its hapless victims. In spite of everything, however, you still invite her to your birthday. She's the only one of your mates who can afford to buy you a decent present.

The one who constantly moans about being poor even though they refuse to get a job in a non-creative industry
"Hey, guys. No, just a tap water for me. I'm really hard up this month. Just like every month. You know how it is being a creative. God, it's so hard being this skint. No, you don't get it, actually, Jamie. My salary is so low I'm not even paying off my student loan yet, and you get a bonus. And you're going to Spain next month. By plane. When I go on holiday, which is never because I'm so poor, I get a Megabus. Check your plane privilege, Jamie. If only there was something I could do to earn more money. Sorry, what? Look for a more profitable job than Features Intern at a biannual magazine about Taiwanese furniture? I can't believe you'd even suggest that. I guess I'm just less into money than you guys."

The one who moved abroad
In this age of social media it has become almost impossible to lose touch with someone and make it look like an accident. You and your friends spent your university days, some of the most formative years of your adult life, completely inseparable, and it was pretty clear that you all wanted to keep it that way after graduation. The only thing is Josh sometimes forgets to reply to messages when he never used to, but he has a busy job. He never comes round for dinner anymore, but who isn't tired on a weeknight? And there was that time when he bailed on Allie's birthday party at the last minute, even though he lives fifteen minutes away, but he was never a big party person anyway.

Weeks become months. Months become years. It's been so long since any of you have seen Josh that you can't really remember what he looks like. There might be one friend that WhatsApps him occasionally, but even they haven't actually seen him in person since 2015. It's time to face up to reality: you've been friend dumped. It will be hard to deal with. You will spend an inordinate amount of time masochistically scouring his social-media photos, looking for an indication that he's made a whole new group of friends (he has, and, yes, they are much cooler than you are). His name will be thrown around at parties for a while, with the more optimistic members of the group saying, "I invited Josh, but he didn't get back to me. Do you think he's OK? I hope he's OK." Listen. Josh is fine. He just doesn't like hanging out with you anymore. All you can do is accept this, unfollow his Instagram, and continue living your life. In another two years' time you will have forgotten he existed and only think about him briefly once a year when he posts 'happy belated birthday, mate! Sorry I'm a bit late, got loads going on atm' on your Facebook wall.