Wooohooo!

So there you have it. All that training was worth it in the end and I ran a half marathon, woop! And in a better time than I ever could have imagined! (The clock said 2.06 when I finished but the chip time records when you cross the start –  just for anyone wondering why my little Twitter/Facebook celebrations were a bit different.)

Anyways, I won’t go on about it too much as it’s all going to be in this week’s Wokingham Times or at www.getwokingham.co.uk soon and my little legs are still tired….which I realise doesn’t effect my ability to write but i think it might be slowing down my brain anways!

So instead I shall share the wonderful wonderful playlist that got me going. The lifesaver songs are in PINK!

• Show me Love – Rebecca Ferguson
• One More Time/Aerodynamic – Daft Punk
• You’re Crashing but you’re no wave – Fallout Boy
• 10,000 Nights – Alphabeat
• Who’s that Chick – David Guetta and Rhi Rhi
• The Time (Dirty Bit) – Black Eyed Peas
• Niton (The Reason) – Eric Prydz
• Around the World/Harder, Better, Faster,Stronger – Daft Punk
• You Make my Dreams – Hall and Oaten
• Howl – Florence + the Machine
• Starry Eyed – Ellie Goulding
• Kickstarts – Example
• What the Hell – Av Lav
• More Remix – Usher
• Candy – Aggro Santos
• Born this Way – Lady GeeGee
• Hallelujah – Fallout Boy
• Ticket Outta Loserville – Son of Dork
• Drumming Song – Florence + the Machine
• We R who we R – Ke$ha
• Don’t Stop Believing – Glee Cast
• I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas
• Piece of Me – Britney Spears
• Just Dance Remix – Lady Gee Gee
• Keep on Running – Spencer Davis Group
• Lost Without Each Other – Hanson (I know i know, Hanson, urgh)
• The Club is Alive – JLS
• I Will learn to love again – Kaci
• Supermassive Black Hole – Muse
• In for the Kill – La Roux
• Bulletproof – La Roux
• Cosmic Love – Florence + the Machine
• Footloose – Kenny Loggins.

And only upon writing that list do I realise what a terrible, terrible taste in running music I have, but it certainly did the trick and here I am looking sweaty and knackered at the finish line.

NOT a good look - but i did it!!

This is my contacts book. bosh.

Ah the contacts book. Possibly the most essential accessory to any stylish journalist. When I first started out as a proper real life journalist  (a whole eight months ago now!) I didn’t write everyone I came across into my book. I know, shudder, horrible, terrible thought.

The people I would speak to once, those climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or ringing in because they weren’t happy with Little Timmy’s school, didn’t go into the book because I didn’t think about needing to speak to them again.

Sometimes a story would reoccur spontaniously like this one and this one and this one about clamping. When I began shuffling through my notepads to find a mobile number randomly scrawled on the corner of a page I realised my filing system would have to change.

Now pretty much everyone goes in. Who knows when you are going to be writing about a school closure and want a chat with that mum you spoke to 18 months ago about her daughter’s ballet competition. Or when a major incident goes off in town and you remember the person who you chatted to about their pet guinea pig which squeaks the alphabet lives down that street.

Nowadays my contacts book is getting pretty chock-a-block. There’s councillors, runners, parents, grandparents, business people, pensioners, car clubs, flower clubs, a well-known comedian, a magic man, fundraisers, a movie star, pub landlords and so the list goes on.

I’m a little bit like the scrawny alien looking thing from Lord of the Rings with his “precious” jotting down phones and email addresses left right and centre.

It really hit home just how important it is to keep numbers and details when I was writing a story about a woman who died who had tragically lost her son almost 25 years earlier. I began to search through the dusty yellowing cuttings finding all sorts of names and contacts who I could get in touch with.

The word contact seems pretty cold. It doesn’t imply any friendship or warmth, it reads as something useful, a tool, rather than a person. But for me that’s not the case. Sure there are people in my book who I would just ring for a specific quote on a one-off subject, and there are contacts who I’m pretty sure like me as much as a burnt piece of toast, but there are also those I will happily ring up on one subject and end up nattering away to about the weather or why it’s so quiet in town over the summer.

Open book...

Contacts are not just contacts. Building a relationship, and a genuine one at that, is incredibly important, along with the big one: trust. One of the fundamentals we were taught at Cardiff Journalism School was that if a contact trusts you not to reveal their identity and you give them that promise then that is a HUGE responsibility. Journalists like Judith Miller from the New York Times have gone to prison for refusing to name their contacts and while it is a terrifying prospect I’d like to think I would let them lock the door on me rather than endanger someone who had given me their trust.

So I guess the moral of the story is to treat your contacts as you would like to be treated. I suppose it’s a bit like a relationship really. You meet, you build on the relationship and get to know each other, you find out what kind of relationship it is and you go from there.

It’s important not to take them for granted and you need a little give and take. So if they talk to your rival paper is it the equivalent of cheating on your spouse? I’m not sure the analogy extends that far but I guess it all just comes down to that old chestnut they call trust.

I AM A RUNNER.

I have a specialist chip for my shoes that tells me how far I’ve run, I talk to people about whether it’s better to eat glucose tablets or gel (as it so happens it’s the former), I moan about my knee injuries and I own Lycra trousers. Nice.

Somehow in three and a half months I’ve gone from driving past runners and thinking I’d quite like to beep the car horn at them for a giggle, to actually being one. And, well, I kind of love it.

Here’s my January column for The Wokingham Times about the Woky Half Marathon, which is less than two weeks away now, a positively terrifying and exhilarating thought all bundled into one big sweaty mess.

I look like an absolute goon in the photo.

I think I’m ready for the run and I kind of can’t wait. Before I started I thought it would be my stamina that could hold me back but now I think if anything does it will be my right knee which has been conspiring against me for the last two weeks or so.

I’ve invested in a knee support, my new best friend whom we shall call Kevin the knee support, and been taking some glucosamine sulphate tablets which strengthen the joints (see I even sound like a proper runner now!!). So with the help of Kevin and the tablets fingers crossed it should all be alright on the day, all 13.1 miles of it, phewf.

So to keep this short and sweet, this time in two weeks, hopefully, really hopefully, i will be able to cross “run a half marathon” off my life list. Next could be the London Marathon next year but we won’t even whisper that idea yet.

And as a final thought, if you want to encourage me in my madness and give me a little reason to keep going on February 13, you can give a little sponsor to:

• Great Ormond Street here
• Or to the Chisinau orphange in Moldova by dropping me an email at caroline.cook27@googlemail.com for details of where to send donations.

Thank you and wish me luck – Kevin and I are going to “knee-d” it!

Running for Moldova

When I decided I wanted to run the half marathon it was a crazy, spur of the moment decision, designed to push myself to physical limits and see if I could reach a goal. I also decided straight away I wanted to run for Moldova.

In June 2009 one of my best friends, Lianna Cole, got on a plane for the first time and flew hundreds of miles to a little-known country, to work in an orphanage in Chisinau in Moldova, for the summer.

It wasn’t one of those gap-year projects, for a student to give something back and “find themselves” in the process, it was a trip which took damn hard work, and another half-marathon, to fund raise for, and it was a trip which was designed to help orphans who don’t have their own cot to sleep in, let alone have someone there to tuck them in at night.

Before Lianna, 22, went there, I’d never really heard of Moldova. Now I know it is a small country next to Romania and the Ukraine that has infant mortality rates in under 5s which match some of the most disadvantaged countries in Africa and the third world.

Lianna and one of the children she looked after in Moldova

Before you click the little X in the top right-hand side of the screen, and think this is just another charity thing, read on because with every extra half mile or quarter mile I’m clocking up in training, it’s a step closer to supporting The Moldova Fund and more and more I’m learning we can do anything we put our minds to, whether thats speeding around a course in Wokingham, or making a difference to a child on the other side of the world.

But, I don’t want this to be a sympathy “tug on the heart strings” kind of blog. It is what it is and the facts speak for themselves.

• It is estimated THIRTY PER CENT of the children in Moldova are orphans, some because parents abandon their children to work abroad in order to survive, and then don’t come back.
• The children are only allowed TWO nappies a day because the orphanage cannot afford any more
• As many as FORTY babies are left in huge cots throughout the day in the boiling heat during the summer months
• Children as young as FIVE have been chained to radiators for hours while they are potty trained

As many as 40 children share cots in the orphanages

And the list goes on. We’ve all read the charity leaflets, and there are so many times I’ve flicked the channel during an aid appeal or walked past a collector in the street, thinking Oh it’s just another one of those charity things, but there’s that old cliche that we can make a difference. Since Lianna came back Broadsheet Boutique’s mum has been Knitting for Moldova, read about it here, and the jumpers and hats have been sent out in monthly packages, which are more vital than ever now it is winter.

Other people have been running, jumping and clicking their knitting needles to donate money and clothes to The Moldova Fund, which if enough is raised, can move from being a charitable organisation to a registered charity, which would allow the recruitment of more volunteers and make it the first charity dedicated to supporting the children of Moldova.

Now, along with my friend Jo Hunt, business lady and cake-baker extraordinaire, I’m hoping to add to the fund. Jo and I will be running the Wokingham Half Marathon on February 13, and have become fundraising buddies to raise as much as we can to support the children who cannot support themselves.

Left: Me ready to run. Right: Jo post-5k run for Cancer Research

It might not change the world but if it can make a day happier for one child then it’s all worth it without a doubt. Whether it’s 50p or £50 you can donate, everything is appreciated to help make tomorrow a little bit better than today for these children.

Donations can be made by online transfer to The Moldova Fund. Unfortunately we cannot run a JustGiving page as you need to be a registered charity, but hopefully this will help the fund get one step closer to that! If you have the time to drop me an email/comment/twitter and let me know you’ve donated that would be great as we would love to be able to say a big thank you to everyone who supports. Details of online transfer are:

Account name: Miss Lianna Cole
Account number: 55006507
Sort Code: 601422
Bank: Natwest

Or email caroline.cook27@googlemail.com if you would like an address to send cash or cheque donations. As well as donations, any unwanted or spare children’s clothes, blankets, hats, scarves or dried food really is also welcome and is sent out in monthly bundles to the orphange. Unfortunately we do not send children’s toys as the orphanages tend to display toys for visitor’s benefits and the children are not actually able to play with them.

Thanks in advance and keep checking The Jog Blog for more updates.

There's snow thing like it...

But seeing as a) we have all had enough of it b) I have poured myself a glass of wine and am no longer fuming at it and c) if we ignore it it might go away, this blog is instead about the wonderful world of celebrity.

I promise you this is not just an opportunity for me to gloat about mixing with the rich and famous, as you will see when you read on, but merely a window into the regional journalists pocket of mini-celebs, and a chance for me to tell you how I embarrassed myself in front of Jimmy Carr.

One of the perks of journalism is sometimes getting to meet a celebrity. OK so the word itself is subjective but nonetheless there is that little bit of excitement when you speak to, or even better, meet, one of those starry-eyed famous people that you see on the telebox and whatnot.

My first celeb-encounter in the name of journalism was this:

Any ideas who they are?!....Rachel and Glyn from Big Brother

Of course, you probably have no idea who they are, but alas that is the wonder of Big Brother for you. I met them during my “fake” Big Brother audition when I went along to the Cardiff round to see what the audition was like. Rachel was lovely but I think I offended Glyn a little because I hadn’t read the G-spot column in the uni paper where people celebrity-spotted him around Cardiff. Whoops.

My second famous encounter was Alex Jones. This lady. From The One Show. At the time I thought I was going to meet Katherine Jenkins at a charity launch during a Cardiff production day so when I turned up I found the whole thing pretty naff. Just goes to show you can’t ever rule a celebrity out of the picture, after all who knows where they’ll be next?

Another celeb encounter, although not strictly speaking in the working capacity, was funny man Jimmy Carr. This one has to sneak in because the look on Jimmy’s face was priceless. There I was at Cardiff train station with the sister while her boyfriend ran into Burger King and as a man walks past us she says, “That guy looks like Jimmy Carr….Omg….It IS Jimmy Carr.” Without a moments pause, I turn around, excited, and yell, “Jimmy, I love your work.” Not, you’re really funny, or I’m a big fan. I LOVE your work.
He turned, a little startled at the loon shouting his name, nodded his head, said thanks very much, and then walked at double the pace to the station. And the sister’s boyfriend returned with a Whopper Meal and missed the whole thing. You’ve gotta be quick to pap these celebs you know.

My third celeb encounter was Mr Alan Titchmarsh, although that was just a chat over the phone, and pleasant it was too. It ended up in a feature here, and we talked about knicker elastic, as you do.

And that takes us to my most recent brush with the limelight, last weekend when I met….wait for it…. Jamie “Afro” Archer from the X Factor. You can see the video I shot, put together very nicely by The Wokingham Times’ online editor, here. Fellow X Factor pal Danyl Johnson also went along, so I guess that can be a double-celeb encounter. Jamie was probably the most charismatic celeb I have met so far, and whether it was the mulled wine, or the fact he is actually quite good looking in the flesh, i did find myself a little shaky with the camera. But that was probably just the cold.

If you squint I really don't look that odd. Really.

OK so it might not be the A-listers filling up my star-portfolio just yet, but whether its Z-list or A*-list there’s something rather exciting about chatting to someone who has been in the spotlight, whether they are still in it or not. And besides, if I met David Beckham or Leo DiCaprio I’d either scream or faint, and there would go my professional credibility as quick as you can say “David I Loooove you.”

About a month and a half ago my gym efforts were something akin to a hippo trying to ice skate on a frozen pond while singing God Save the Queen. In fact it was a bit like this:

But fast forward countless training sessions and some pretty hefty treadmill action in the gym and now I’m up to a fairly reasonable pace. Today I did my first hour long jog, and it felt difficult but not impossible. The cold was chapping my lips and making my hands like sandpaper  (an attractive image!) but I pushed on and ran and ran and ran.

I’m actually, dare I say it, starting to enjoy this training malarky. Yes a bubbly hot chocolate topped with marshmellows looks more appealing than putting on my running shoes and heading out into the will-it-wont-it-snow weather but when I get in from a run I feel pumped and energised and raring to go.

At the moment the biggest challenge is trying to find the time to train. I took Bill and Ted all the way to Newcastle last weekend with good intentions of going for a run but hectic schedules meant they had to stay in the hotel room. I hear they had a great time ordering room service so it’s not all bad.

It can be tricky balancing work/social life/sleep and trying to squeeze in a session of pounding the pavements but for now i’m managing around two to three sessions a week, and I’ll just have to up the ante after Christmas.

I also wrote my second run column for the paper, cue a slightly squinty eyed, lyrca-clad me:

Bill and Ted find newspaper fame

Following the article publication I had a comment asking whether I will be running for a charity and I will be setting up some sort of sponsorship page in December and blogging about the very good cause for which I will be puffing around Wokingham for.

And for now, the training continues. More and more I’m thinking the key to success in this running malarky is a state of mind. And a damn good soundtrack. For a while it was Lady GaGa keeping me going but then I had a dream where I met her in court and she was wearing a dress made out of biscuits so now it’s all about a good mixture of dance tracks to keep me going. And whenever things get a little tough, there is always the air-punching, bum wiggling, Kevin Bacon glitter dancing, Footloose. So if you see me run-dancing for about 3 minutes during the marathon you’ll know why.

They're hats. On Smoothies. A-mazing.

OK so that might be a slight variation on the true story of how Innocent smoothies got their hats but nonetheless the smoothie hat is pretty.damn.cool.

Last year I wrote this, and while browsing in Boots at Heathrow for an early morning snack this weekend I spotted the return of The Big Knit. And boy was I excited.

Each year Innocent ask hundreds of knitting types across the UK to click their needles and make adorable hats which are then popped onto their smoothies to keep them warm in refrigerator cabinets all around the country. Again, not strictly the reason, but before I seem too much like a pathological liar, let me tell you the truth.

The smoothie hats are a genius idea by Innocent smoothie to raise money for Age UK. For every bottle of gorgeous fruity, hat-wearing smoothie, 25p is donated to the charity which helps care for elderly people across the country, who particularly need our help when it’s cold and frosty outside.

I wish I had been organised enough to start knitting my own hats to send in when the appeal started and next year I plan to be knee-deep in wool making hats of all colours and varieties like those smoothie knitting grannies. For now however, I will support the cause by popping into the supermarket, picking up a rather cheerful looking smoothie and trying to convince the miniature Schnauzer that he does want to wear a woolly hat.

A hat-wearing dog is not just for Christmas

Yes there is hard work too and having a nose for news helps quite a bit, but sometimes, just when you think it might be a slow news day, one passing comment, one teeny tiny question, can send you jumping in your car with your heart beating, driving slightly like a maniac, and arriving at a scene of police tape and people and confusion, and feeling the adrenaline pump as you get one of those moments that make you feel like you have the most exciting job in the world.

Today was like that. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m slightly distracting myself from getting ready for a jog on this cold, cold winter night, but alas before I pull on my Lycra and watch my breath frost in front of me in the dark, here’s a word or two about the media and today’s student protest in London. Yes this one, the protest turned riot.

We were watching it all unfold in the office, and from a reporting point of view, it was interesting to follow the #debate2010 hash tag on Twitter, as that’s where I heard the peaceful protest present had been unwrapped and there were bits of ribbon all over Millbank Towers. Even the images played out on the social network site with this phenomenal picture tweet by @THELOVEMAGAZINE.

From Twitter we went to Sky and the BBC where they had live feeds of students causing mayhem. While the jokes of students, baked beans, and Gazza, floated about on Twitter, we watched the action, live in front of us.

On Radio 1 Newsbeat on the way home the travel bulletins advised commuters to stay away from the scene of the protest. The student stampede, as you would expect in our communication age, had infiltrated every medium of the media.

Although the violence and chaos presented by some protesters was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary, with my journalistic hat on, it became one of those stories that you can’t take your eyes away from. Some of these are good. Some are horrific. But all are the kind of thing you do keep refreshing the page for. When the big news breaks, be it a local story or a national protest, you can’t help but get involved, keep your eye on Tweetdeck, rush to the scene and wait with baited breath to find out what has happened this time in our ever so slightly crazy world.

So last week I went to court. And no, I haven’t been committing any petty crimes, I was there to report. Court reporting really is one of the most fascinating aspects of my job and I also think it’s incredibly important as we provide the window between the court room and the outside world.

So far in my nearly four-month experience as a real, tangible, proper journalist, I’ve been to court several times and covered some cases which I am sure I will remember for the length of my career. I have run from the office to the local crown court to catch a sentencing, and missed it, which is crushing, especially when you are left a hot and sweaty mess with an empty notebook, and I have had to stop my hands shaking when interviewing a victim after a trial. But with time and experience I have worked out how it works, I have shorthanded like my life depended on it, and I have come up with the goods.

Sitting in the court room can be a bit of a bubble when you’re in there. Everyone becomes so enclosed in that one chamber during the period of the hearing or trial and you are there, sitting on the press bench, and it becomes so much more than a story. You realise these are things that have really happened. It is emotion, it is real and the words which are said can affect a person’s whole life.

Sitting at the back of a Magistrates Court last week waiting while there was a pause in the case I was following, I was reminded of this article which I had read a few weeks previously. In the article, media law consultant and co-author of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, David Banks, discusses how court reporting is a dying art, and well, I think he may be right.

In the article Banks says there are two threats which are making the court reporter an endangered species:

1)      That old chestnut of financial pressures on the industry, which of course needs no further explanation, and

2)      Proposals to close 103 magistrates courts and 54 county courts meaning journalists will have to travel further to follow local cases.

It can be difficult when you are sitting in court all day, knowing there are papers and emails stacking up on your desk like a filing system which has exploded, and becoming frustrated when there is a pause for legalities which you cannot report but can delay a case by hours or days. Time which could be spent chasing other leads.  And adding to the dilemma is the point that not every newspaper has the resources or the need to have a dedicated court report roaming the dusty chambers of the local crown or mags court.

So what’s the solution? Well, there is no way court reporting can die out altogether. It is a matter of public interest. People have a right to know how our justice system is operating and what is being done in the name of the law. Perhaps court reporters will evolve into journalists with court reporting skills, as already exists in many newsrooms up and down the country.

Banks says court reporting is an art and it takes an experienced court reporter to develop contacts and know the restrictions. I agree that being in court all day every day would sharpen your skills, but as someone who has dipped into the bubble when cases come up, I think with good enough short hand, back-to-back knowledge of McNae (Thank you Cardiff Journalism School!) and enough nous to go up and ask for names and details despite not having a contact, then you are perfectly capable of court reporting.

It is essential that local papers continue covering local stories whenever they can. Someone has to be that window and after all, how will our communities know about the working of justice and law if that court room bubble bursts?

Birthday cakeness

Well if the title didn’t give it away, I’m pretty sure the sugary looking birthday cake to the left did. It’s our birthday! Broadsheet Boutique is one-year-old today, and wow, how much has happened in a year.

A year ago today I had been sitting in a lecture about Online journalism where I was told to start a blog. It’s good for journos. And if I didn’t do it I wouldn’t pass the module. Simples.

As fantastic ideas about cake blogs, fashion blogs, travel blogs and sports blogs whirled around the room I knew straight away it would be all about the DIY fashion, with a few bits of journalism thrown in.

Fast forward a year through a dizzy whirlwind of fun, exams, rain, beer, shorthand, typing, blogging and learning more in the past year than I ever have before, I finally popped out the other end, like the lid of a Smartie when you stamp on the tube and it comes flying out the other end, and voila, I’m a proper journo with a proper blog. OK so it’s not quite found me my fame and fortune but it’s been fun. I love my blog. And I love that people have been dipping in and out of it with me for a year. So grab a slice of cake, let’s toast the Champagne, and the stats can say the rest.

• 8, 629 total views (thank you!)
• 198 highest number of views ever on one day, (all down to the leggings project)
• 365 days
• 124 comments (And not all by Broadsheet Boutique’s mum i promise)
• 70 blog posts
• 29 Sewing fashion-related posts
• 32 posts about journalism
• 9 posts slightly off-topic
• 2 mentions of Russel Brand
• 1 blog face lift.

Happy Birthday little blog!

Let me take you 20 years into the future and introduce you to average Joe.

When average Joe was growing up everything was free. He got his music for free on Spotify. He got his TV for free on iplayer and paying for his news was a laughable concept because there was the BBC and the Guardian online and a whole host of news services which didn’t ask for a penny.

Average Joe didn’t go out in his slippers to get the newspaper on a Sunday morning. He had vague memories of average Joe senior popping to Tesco and coming back with sheets of paper with words printed on it but that was the older generation for you. Average Joe had no need to trade coins for news. It was all free.

Then one day the Times slammed down a pay wall. At first everyone scoffed because almost 90 per cent of its readers skipped merrily across to the BBC or other free services. But then, one by one, other news institutions decided to give this funny paywall thing a go. The New York Times went, then the Telegraph, the Independent, the Sun, and then all the others one by one until eventually everything was a money-trade off.

And what happened? Could average Joe really forget there was a time when everything was free? Or did he decide to pack it in all together, bury his head in the sand and live like an ostrich with no concept of what was going in on the world?

Well, I don’t think there is any way we would shun the news altogether even if we do have to pay for it. People need and want to know what is going on in the world, it’s just at the moment they have the option to do that for free. If people are given a piece of delicious lemony cheesecake and told they can either pay for it or have it for free then it doesn’t take a genius to work out which option they will choose. However if the option for a freebie is taken away then of course they will pay, after all everybody loves cheesecake.

When it comes to the crunch the only way this whole paywall malarkey is going to work is if everyone does it. At the moment the Times is the quirky kid at school who has gone out on a limb to dress a little wild but if everyone embraces the trend then suddenly it becomes kind of cool. I think if we want people to pay, and call me biased but I think journalists do deserve to be paid, after all news is a commodity and an important one at that, then the other online news sites have got to follow their trend setter and start building the pay wall.

Average Joe might not have liked having to pay for his news to start with, but 20 years down the line, it’s what he is used to and it is the thing that stopped the newsroom light from being switched off for good.

The paper print yellow brick road

Last weekend I hopped on the train and met two fellow journalists for a lovely lunch in the city. As we are all just beginning to dip our toes in the pond they call Journalism we naturally talked about where we had come from, namely Cardiff, where we were, our first jobs, and inevitably where we might end up in the future.

It got me thinking about the road to nationals, and not the hand-clapping, toe-tapping Glee kind, I mean the papers. I would imagine every journalist starts out with the dream of rushing through London, dictaphone in hand, ducking and diving through the bustling commuters (who are naturally all reading a paper with YOUR byline on) and dishing the dirt on some celebrity misdemeanour or sensational scoop. Obviously, the reality is nothing like that. You’d be shorthanding furiously rather than relying on a dictaphone. Oh and then there is the teeny, tiny detail of actually getting onto a national first.

Last week while covering a court case, i bumped into a reporter from a local news agency in the court press room. He told me he’d been doing shifts for two years before being offered a permanent position on said agency. TWO WHOLE YEARS. And that’s just the step before packing up your bags and heading off to London where the streets are paved with gold, or so they tell me.

So how is it done? Where do people get the golden tickets from? Is it best to go straight to Willy Wonka and beg on your hands and knees, or make friends with an Oompa Loompa and hope they put in a good word?

For some I can imagine it is luck. For others damn hard work. And a sprinkling of talent and tenacity probably doesn’t go amiss either.

When I first looked into the whole journalism thing, I pretty much wanted Caitlan Moran’s story. She won The Observor’s Young Journalist of the Year award at 15, began her career with a music publication at 16, when by the way she also wrote a novel, and then boom she’s got her own column in The Times. I wanted the Times column, or to write the Bizarre bit in The Sun, (I wasn’t fussy).

Now I see that times have changed, no-one slips into a journalists job at 16, and then skips into the nationals with a cheeky smile and a wink. Today from what I have heard from friends and media-types it would appear the method is postgraduate courses, weekend shifts and contacts.

Right now it is a hazy image somewhere in the horizon. From what I have heard everyone’s yellow brick road is a different story, filled with daring courage, tough adventures and in one story a case of beer which got the editor to reception and convinced him to take the rookie on board. I’m yet to see how my story will pan out, whether I will make it to the city for more than lunch is another question but right now I can’t think of a better way to learn my skills than be in the midst of journalism, working hard on a regional newspaper, enjoying every second and making sure that if Mr Murdoch does come knocking, I’ll be ready.

If anyone wants to share their own experiences of the route they have taken in the journo business I’d be very interested to hear them so feel free to leave a comment below.

In fact it was this article from The Sunday Times in May, called “Hold the Front Page, I want to be on it.” If you are a journalist/were a journalist/or want to be a journalist I’d definitely recommend having a read. It sums up the fight to get behind the golden gates of the industry perfectly, and it has a cheeky little mention of the wonderful Cardiff Journalism School too.

Right at the beginning the article quoted Nicholas Tomalin, (note to self: become well-known enough journo to warrant a Wikipedia page) a ‘bombastic Sunday Times writer’ who said this:

“The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.”

Plausible manner. Check. A little literary ability. Double Check. Rat-like cunning…..hmmmm. That’s the one that stumped me. I guess you do have to be cunning to some extent, knowing when to keep something schtum and when to wriggle through the cracks and find the juicy bit of cheese at the end. But something about rats and cunning makes me a little dubious, it sounds a little like buying into the reputation that when you sign up to journalism you sign away your morals, and that’s just not true. My morals are firmly where they started thank you very much.

On the other hand the article gives it’s own neat little list of what you need to become a journalist these days, and it’s spot on:

• luck
• flair
• an alternative source of income
• endless patience
• an optimistic disposition
• sharp elbows
• and a place to stay in London.
• Oh and the biggie – tenacity

All of the above are pretty darn true. I got lucky because I picked work experience at a fantastic office and was in the right place at the right time when a vacancy came through.

My flair probably comes through my feature writing and being happy when an intro sounds right but not boring.

Alternative source of income, well the bank of mum and dad has firmly closed for business now, but four years of student life has given me a crash course on how to live in a budget.

Endless patience comes from waiting and waiting and waiting for a contact to call back but then trusting they probably will and it’ll all be alright on the night.

An optimistic disposition gets a big green tick because it’s always better to hope for sunshine and then make the most laughing in the rain when it falls.

I’ve just examined my elbows and they’re not exactly sharp but they’re probably just small enough to squeeze through the gap rather than push people out of the way.

A place to stay in London – Buckingham Palace with granny. Sorted.

And tenacity. If I didn’t have this I never would have got to Exeter, then to Cardiff and then to The Wokingham Times.

As the article concludes, it takes a spoonful of tenacity and a big dollop of luck and a constant thirst for the thrill of chasing a story, and well, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

For everyone else, here is an amusing list of newspaper headlines, followed by a sumptuous selection of links to some of the funniest newspaper typos, headlines and articles I could find (they’re well worth a click) because, well, sometimes mistakes happen and when life hands you lemons sometimes you just have to have a giggle and make a damn good lemonade cocktail.

Hilarious (Real) Headlines:

• Drunks get nine months in violin case
• Include your children when baking cookies
• Fried chicken cooked in microwave wins trip
• Tiger Woods plays with own balls, Nike Says
• Policeman helps dog bite victim
• 30 year friendship ends at alter
• Milk drinkers are turning to powder
• If strike isn’t settled quickly it may take a while
• Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers

Some of the best links I could find:

• Brothers eh?
• It’s an mystery
• Bet he didn’t applaud that headline
• Postman pat?
• The oldies aren’t that bad
• Possibly my favourite of them all – if you only read one read this.

And the newspaper that spelt it’s own name wrong, owch.

Meet my friend Tom

Let me introduce you to my friend Tom. Tom lives in my handbag, and from time to time takes a little vacation to my car dashboard. Tom has an Australian accent and unlike me he is GREAT with directions. The reason I am introducing you to Tom is because I think he may be a journalists best friend.

Take yesterday for example. This story broke in the afternoon. Pretty big for the first week eh? (Even bigger when this rocked up a few hours later.) Luckily for me my fellow reporter was pretty nifty with an A-Z (which I am hoping after a few months on the patch I will be too) but it made me think, for now at least, if I had been on my own I’d be up the creek without the paddle. Or rather I wouldn’t because I’d have Tom there with a dingy of some sort.

In most areas of life I fit the stereotype of a typical girl. I love shoes, I drink cosmos, I’m scared of spiders, but none do I more horribly conform to than the age old rumour that girls can’t do directions. Now don’t get me wrong, I disagree with the myth, I know plenty of girls who can figure out where they’re going, but for me it just isn’t going to happen. When someone asks me for directions my brain packs it’s little bermuda shorts, grabs it’s suitcase and waddles out my left ear on vacation. Quicker than you can say LOST.

So this bodes something of a problem for a journalist who has to race to the scene when the rumours start to filter in, and after all the aim is to get there before the competition, so there’s no time for hanging about and shaking the map in frustration. This is where Tom proves to be a handy little soldier, just pop the postcode in and off we go.

Earlier in the week I went out with the local police for a morning and it turns out Tom turns up everywhere these days, (either that or he was having a problem with the law). I guess for any profession, it is handy having someone, or something, to rely on as a back up, so you can focus on the big stuff, like what on earth you do when you turn up at a scene with a dozen police and a very big story.

I am sure over time when I’ve raced all over the patch for various stories and adventures I won’t need to rely on my little Tom quite so much, but for now it’s a reassuring sound to hear “in 300 yards, turn left.”

The Golden Hinde - Home of real pirates

Call me crazy but yesterday I volunteered to take thirty 9 and 10-year-olds to The Golden Hinde in London as part of a school trip. When I say volunteered I mean, easily persuaded by big sister the teacher who was, well, desperate, and desperate times call for desperate measures dontchaknow.

So as I was walking the children from waterloo station and through central London I began to ponder how different things could have been if I had followed my original choice for a career and become more Mr Schu than Lois Lane. (Incidentally I had to resist calling out, Come on geese geese geese as it was all far too much like the bit in Fly Away Home where Anna merrily skips along followed by a line of baby geese.)

Anyway, I got thinking and well some things would be pretty similar if I had opted for shiny red apples and blackboards. For instance you have to keep your eyes and ears open at all times. In journalism it’s so you don’t miss the scoop, in teaching it’s so you catch the kids before they take a walk off the plank of the Golden Hinde with a cry of ‘Arghh me hearties.’

Then there is a curiosity. As a reporter we’re curious all the time, wondering what is happening and hoping to be the first to find out. In teaching it’s the kids who are curious, asking a million questions, including asking the actor aboard the ship if he’s a real pirate. (To which he thought a moment and then said triumphantly, ‘Yes.’)

Then there is the unexpected. They say in showbiz that you should never work with children or animals and I would imagine it is because you can never quite be sure what they might say or do next. Think Karen and Ben from Outnumbered. So one minute the kids are all lined up ready to go aboard the ship, and the next one of them is happily chatting away to a passer-by….after joining them at their lunch table in Cafe Nero. Switch the camera to journalism and the unexpected is probably one of the best things. It is when the unexpected happens that the adrenaline really starts to pump and everything goes up a few gears.

On the other hand some things are entirely different. As a journalist you don’t have to tell small people to stop shouting on the train, and you don’t tend to get the look of half pity/half admiration that greets the teacher leading the geese through London. And that admiration is well deserved. Not many people would have the patience to handle excitable children all day and if the day taught me anything it was an entirely new respect for those in the teaching profession.

For me though, it is definitely journalism which wins the points and I was quite glad to get back to my pen and notepad after a day with the geese. After a long day in London I learnt that while teaching is a phenomenal skill and profession, journalism is certainly the one for me. Although the guy who can answer “Yes” when asked if he’s a real life pirate is pretty darn cool too.

Things I've learnt - number nine

Almost exactly a year ago I had spent a whole day refreshing the Exeter University email blackboard system to find out if a) I had a degree and b) that would mean I was going to Cardiff. Eventually I gave up and went to the cinema. When I came back I found out I had indeed got myself one of those curly papers tied with red ribbon. And that was the beginning.

Fast forward a year and now I’m coming to the end of what has been an exciting, hard, insightful, stressful, amazing and too-short year. I’ve worked harder than I ever have before and I’ve learnt one hell of a lot.

Before I came to Cardiff I spent a few moments on Google, trying to find out what I could about life at CJS and in Cardiff. But nothing can really prepare you until you’re up at 5.30am pulling on clothes ready for a production day and just thinking about the sausage and egg sandwich that will get you through at 11am.

Now our roles have probably been cast for next year, without giving away too much of the magic (because it really is better to discover it for yourself) here are ten things I think I’ve learnt, which perhaps someone like me will be learning next year, before they embark on the exciting world of first jobs and journalism.

1. Facing your fears is a good thing – it might be scary going and door knocking, or turning up at an event just because you’re a nosy journalist who wants to know what is going on, but when you get the story, it is so worth it.
2. It takes a little bit of luck – Yes you can make your own luck but being in the right place at the right time can count for whether you get the scoop or not. Possibly time to go hunting for a four leaf clover.
3. It is possible to survive on four or five hours sleep a night – Late night reviews, long evenings of feature writing and early starts for production days. It can be done even if it feels like you’re about to fall asleep during the post-production day debrief.
4. People can be really really nice – You hold your breath, about to leap in and try to voxpop a stranger after 20 people have told you to bugger off. And that one person is lovely. And that cancels out the not-so-good.
5. A quiet news patch isn’t always bad thing – So we may not have got a dozen page leads from Llandaff but it taught us how to really try and get stories, and it’s a beautiful place. And it has good tea shops.
6. Some things do have to be left to the last minute – I’ve always been the kind of person that finishes work days before the deadline but in the fast and furious world of journalism you do sometimes have to be up the night before the deadline, tea on tap, typing away through the night. And it does always get done.
7. Grades only go so far, then comes experience – While it is nice to get a nice little red pen 70 on the top of your copy, what matters so much more is the real experiences you pick up along the way. That’s where you really learn.
8. People will get mad and yell at you – It comes with the territory, but it makes you stronger.
9. Shorthand - It seems like you will never get it, you hate it, you have nightmares about it and you start to look at your hand really angrily when it won’t stop shaking. But, when you’ve got it, it’s golden.
10. It’s only the beginning – And that after all is the most exciting thing. It’s almost a week till I start my very first job, and if this year has been a taste of what is to come in the world of Journalism, I absolutely cannot wait.

While waltzing my way through the Times this week I noticed the paper has given the launch a lot of coverage to the iPad craze over the last few days. I thought it was particularly interesting to see that over half of page 3 was taken up by an advert for the iPad edition of the paper on Friday AND Saturday.

But the picture on page 18 and 19 on Saturday pretty much summed things up. There was 17-year-old Jake Lee (who looked suspiciously like Eoghan Quigg of X-factor fame) who had queued over night to get his hands on the latest shiny offering from Apple. With staff members clapping in the background and Jake waving an iPad in the air, anyone would think this boy had just run the marathon or saved a baby, rather than just buying a piece of technology.

So why is everyone so excited? Well, aside from the Macolytes who are excited about anything new, bright white, and with a half eaten Apple on it, Murad Ahmed in the Times suggests media organisations are rather excited at the prospect of actually being able to charge for online content through apps like iPad edition of The Times. For just £9.99 every 28 days you too can banish newspaper print to the dusty storerooms of yesteryear and have news on a screen in front of you, fully interactive, and shiny, oh so very shiny.

On the week that the Times and Sunday Times launched new websites, which from next month will be hidden under the smoky screen of a pay wall, it is interesting that the iPad is being peddled as an additional online money spinner for the newspaper. And it might just catch on. After all it is an easier way to access news and not too expensive, after you have shelled out the initial £450+ for the iPad that is.

But for me it’s all a little bit too sci-fi. Yes pay walls will be a good idea if they work and online will be the future whether we like it or not but I just can’t help but think we are being over-run by technology. Gone will be the days when commuters pull a newspaper from their bag and leave it scrumpled on the seat next to them for the next traveller. Instead we’ll all be like sardines, packed into trains (or hover cars) all hunched over our glowing machines, clicking and tapping away without the smell of print and the sound of rustling pages.

It is inevitable really and, to save our industry, perhaps the only way forward, but with technology constantly parading itself through iPods, iPhones and iPads I wonder if we will ever get an iBreak?

As I’m sure you know by now, after an interview with pensioner Gillian Duffy, our prime minister was heard being, umm,  less than complimentary. Forgetting he had left his interview mic on, old Gordy was caught doing something we all do every now and again, having a good old bitch.

To be fair, leaving your microphone on is pretty much a school-boy error. Actually when I was in school a sixth former did just that, coming off stage during a play and announcing “it’s pretty shit isn’t it.” Ah we live and learn. Or not, in Gordy’s case.

Guardian journalist Marina Hyde had some interesting things to say on the matter here. I particularly like that she refers to the journalists as “slavering hacks,” and you can kind of imagine it can’t you? When one of the main candidates in the general election totters along to an area to wave at the cameras and kiss some babies the press are out in force (as I experienced with the flurry of photographers and journalists who turned out to see David Cameron in Reading when I was on work experience.) But when said candidate does something out of the ordinary, the cartoon style eyes-popping out of head happens and horooah, this is a pretty average meet-and-greet turned into a cracking story.

We all know that adrenaline rush when you realise you have something which is going to hit the headlines, but what does the situation say about us “slavering hacks” desperate to gorge on the story? Marina Hyde refers to the press as the flies buzzing around Gordy’s, urm, waste, and well we kind of have to cringe and then nod in agreement.

We journalists get a pretty bad reputation. See this joke which I was told the other day for case example: What do you call 20 journalists at the bottom of the ocean? Not enough. 

I think we have to accept that while we are only trying to report on what is happening, sometimes that does mean camping outside a pensioner’s house and badgering her for an interview even though she’s just been publicly insulted. Other times it means sitting in on an inquest to find out the details of someone’s death, even though their family may just want space to grieve.

 A journalist once told me that sometimes we’ve just got to accept that we have moments when we are scum. But we are doing it for the right reasons and that’s what counts. Sure Gordy made a mistake, and I think it’s been blown way out of proportion by the media, but on the other hand he did say it and people have a right to know that. As journalists we may have to delve into situations which invade people’s lives and I’m not sure what I would think were the shoe on the other foot. But as a journalist I know that I am not going into those situations to be nosy or sensationalist, it is to inform the public of something that has happened, and I will tread as softly as I can in doing that.

I guess it’s a tricky sort of situation, but one thing we can be sure on is that it’s probably best to switch your mic off before you start to bitch.

As it so happens in two weeks and one day (to be precise) you can put all the skills you’ve spent the last 6 months learning into practise and find out that all the jigsaw pieces do actually fit together.

When I began the course at Cardiff, work experience seemed a million miles away and made me shake like the dog in the polo advert. However, somehow we’ve made it through a dizzy 6 months of work and amazing experiences and I’m out the other side, loving my work experience placements and all the opportunities that each day is throwing my way at the moment, be that a trip to the cinema to review the new Ricky Gervais flick because it’s been set in Reading, or talking to people about how a gigantic volcanic has blown it’s top and caused rather a big palava for the aviation industry. But how did we get here? Lets take a look:

September
One word. Shorthand. Life began at Cardiff on 21st September and thus followed a month of 9am starts, scribbling symbols which definitely didn’t make sense, and definitely didn’t seem to get any faster for quite a while.

October
Public Admin, Media Law, fantastic lectures in Reporters and the Reported (including that radio show by Ross and Brand) and learning news writing skills put us into the full swing of things. Then there was the airport exercise, which was an adrenaline fuelled flurry of running around Cardiff airport, an introduction to Llandaff and getting to know some great new people.

November
We kicked off November with a trip to review the National Dance Company for Wales show, then met PCSO Dan, Lucy at Insole, our local councillors, Peter from the gift shop and a nice man from Trading Standards who showed me how to spot fake champagne. We had the dreaded routine calls, which we naturally failed first time round and we made a sunday supplement.

December
By some miracle I passed shorthand (I’m still not sure how it happened in the end) and completed an online project, which proved to be a whole different experience entirely a few months later. Then it was home and christmas and sleep and revision.

January
The dreaded PA exams and then genuine terror at the prospect of the first production day. I was a head office reporter and had a fantastic time. This was the month when everything went up a gear, to 5.30am starts and finding news and cat nibs. And fake auditioning for big brother, and going on ghost walks, and snow, lots of snow.

February
Fully into the swing of production days we pushed ourselves to the very limit, getting out into our news patches, writing features on meals on wheels and finding out that actually being news editor isn’t quite as terrifying as we thought. Suddenly production days changed from flailing about in the spirally bit of a hurricane to being dead centre in the eye of the storm and loving it. And we discovered Danescourt.

March
We started shifts on local newspapers, a kind of stepping-stone from production days to the real world. I had my proudest production day achievement as editor of Hwyl, which if I say so myself, looked lovely. I was so proud at the work everyone put in to make that. There was lots more traipsing back from Llandaff in the rain and lots of tired days as we wound to the end of production days.

April
The month everything changed. Suddenly we were finished with our comfortable seats in the Bute Building, our tea runs and our own little newsroom and we were catapulted into the real thing.

And isn’t it fantastic?

1. Doing something different every day.
There’s something fantastic about waking up every day and not knowing what is going to break or where you are going to be sent. I can’t think of any other job where one minute you will be sitting at your desk writing about a missing cat and the next you’ll be in court watching someone defending themselves over a crime.

2. Meeting people we would never meet otherwise.
Ok, i promise not to go on about it after this, but today is my case example. After arriving at The Reading Post for my first day of work experience the newsroom had a call about David Cameron visiting a local builders merchants in the next half an hour. I was fortunate to be allowed to go along with the reporter covering the story and sit in on a one-to-one chat with the conservative candidate. It was great to see a snippet of election fever without a television screen in between.

3. Being at the centre of everything that is going on.
I guess we journalists are fundamentally nosy. You kind of have to be because it is that eagerness to be at the centre of the story that drives us. I love being able to race to the scene and be in the middle of it all.

4. Telling people about the important stuff.
Election fever is currently running high temperatures in newsrooms all over the country and I’m wishing now that I had stepped forward to get a bit more involved come May 6. I didn’t really think I ‘got’ politics but calling up candidates for political profiles and hearing local MPs speak makes me realise that it’s not about ‘getting it.’ Its listening and digesting and thinking and reporting. It’s about communicating the important stuff.

5. Feeling like this is real life.
So much of life is behind a screen or transmitted over the airwaves that its easy to forget the news stories are real. In Cardiff we covered quite a big court case and suddenly I realised that these are real people and real emotions and that sort of ‘realness’ is quite something.

6. Using so many different skills
So we all know about shorthand but there are so many less tangible skills that you need to be a journalist and juggling them all can be tough but also really rewarding when you manage to not let any drop on the floor. You have to be compassionate and remember that this is not just a story, it is someones life. You have to be confident because if you don’t knock on that door you are not going to get that story. You have to be charismatic because people probably won’t talk to you if you’re rude.

7. Getting let in on secrets.
When someone gives you a story and you know you have it before anyone else, it’s a pretty good feeling. For me that came in a feature when I was the first reporter to go along to Cardiff’s first ever secret supperclub. Knowing I’d gone out and found that from scratch was pretty cool.

8. Writing writing writing.
If you didn’t love writing it would probably never occur to you to become a journalist in the first place. I first fell in love with writing and imagined being Carrie Bradshaw sitting in my pjamas with a cocktail writing creative, flourishing pieces. Then I came to Cardiff, became a reporter and now I think I’d rather be Lois Lane. She’s a bit more ballsy.

9. The freebies.
A bit of a shallow one, but every job has its perks. So far it’s been a delicious homecooked meal, a tour around the millenium stadium in Cardiff and tickets to see newton faulkner which are probably my top three.

10. Seeing my name in print.
Although it may make me sound very much like a trainee to admit it but I still get excited when I see my byline. I kind of hope that feeling never goes.

Last week I was at The Bracknell News, a small weekly local paper really serving the community in and around Bracknell. I had a fantastic time and worked with some lovely reporters who were fantastic in showing me the ropes and giving me style points. It was interesting to see much of their style guide was similar to the one we use at CJS, but more on that in a minute.

Over the week I managed to write on a whole variety of topics, interviewing a whole selection of people including a Led Zeppelin tribute band and a boy who is moving to the states to go to the same drama school as Kim Catrall and Adrian Brody. I think variety is one of the most enjoyable things about journalism, I’d wake up every day wondering where I was going to be sent and what I was going to do next.

Also it’s a particularly interesting time to be getting into journalism what with the old election coming up. On my first day I was sent to voxpop the people of Bracknell for an article and it was interesting to see their responses. A lot of people seemed disheartened with the entire thing. They also highlighted Bracknell’s regeneration as something which needs to get started. I agree.

 I also tried to voxpox a man who was, quite clearly, drunk, although in my enthusiasm I didn’t realise until we were in mid-conversation so it was a case of me going “Oh thats brilliant, thanks, thats everything I need,” to him going, “You’re really pretty.” Cue exit.

Another interesting, election-related activity I had, was to go and listen to Adam Afriyie the conservative parliamentary candidate for Windsor who was speaking on the environment. It was interesting to feel at the heart of a local campaign and to see the different views being shared.

Over all it was a fantastic week and I have shorthanded as if my life depended on it! The experience also made me realise how well CJS has prepared us. There was no situation where I thought, eek i have no idea what i’m doing, because we’ve given most things a go during production days. I was speaking to a reporter who is yet to go to her first crown court case, but I take it for granted that I have already sat in a few different cases and had that experience.

Now I’m ready and raring to go for my next week at The Reading Post, which I think, as a bigger paper in a bigger area, may be an entirely different experience, so watch this space!

Now regardless of your career job hunting is pretty darn tricky at any time, and especially at the moment what with the state of well, everything. Add to that an industry which is moving away from paper to the big wide web then we have something of a problem.

Throughout the year we have had some fantastic speakers at Cardiff Journalism School, many of whom have assured us of our bravery for choosing to enter the industry at a time when things are more than just a little bit difficult. Bravery is nice, but a white horse and battered sword isn’t going to get us a job.

Articles like this one concerning journalism job cuts back in 2008 are pretty daunting but considering that was at the bleak point two years ago, perhaps we can be a little optimistic that we are on the upward slope now? I found out yesterday that one of my friends from my undergraduate days at The University of Exeter has got her first job. Ok, she’s not a journalist, she’s a teacher, but it gave me a little bit of hope that the job hunting story can have a happy ending!

Yes newsrooms have cut their staff and yes the number of available jobs may be a lot, lot, less than say 10 years ago, but this doesn’t mean packing our bags and heading off to sell coconuts on a caribbean beach just yet. Although the weather would be nicer.

On Hold the Front page (which I fear soon will be a personal rival to Twitter for useage), there are 14 reporting jobs today. Also with new opportunities like Guardian local popping up, which hopefully will expand across the country, there is a new pool of digital jobs which might offer some exciting options.

After all, newspapers may be going online but we are still going to need someone to type the words for the website rather than the newspaper, right?

Well this is all delightfully rambly, and it has been a fruitful way to procrastinate from actually getting down to the scary business of putting pen to paper. Nonetheless, although times have been tough, the only way to do it, is well to just do it. So I won’t be packing the coconuts just yet, instead I’m putting on some goggles and diving into the pool headfirst to see what I can find.

It was acceptable in the 80s

I remember my sister and I having matching dresses when we were little - velvet bodices with shiny full-skirts, I think mine was purple and the other gold. For that we can only blame the 80s.

Dress fashion comes and goes, and what was fashionable back in the day, see exhibt A, would be laughed off the catwalk today. I think that’s the beauty of dress fashion though, people are always coming up with a new style or a new way to reinvent a classic wardbrobe staple.

Take the Theresa Dress on Burdastyle for example. The high neckline and calf length suggest 1920s tea-dress but the patterned material and ruffled front give it a modern twist. While we’re on the subject of Burdastyle there’s also this crazy yellow award dress featured on there at the moment – it’s gorgeous!

There’s something about zipping up the back of a cocktail dress, or pulling on a tutu style skirt which makes you feel instantly glamorous, and maybe that’s the thing. Dresses have always been a mark of feminity and a good dress can give you an instant confidence boost.

 Dresses also have an ability to make you fall instantly in love. My sister found this one (see second in from the right below) in Macy’s in New York and it was one of those must-buy situations. Sometimes a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do, right? (And as a younger sister it’s my duty to raid her wardrobe from time to time, and so it became the graduation ball dress.)

So much dress love!

So many memories become intertwined in the fabric of a good dress, think Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City movie when she’s deciding which dresses to keep and which to chuck.

Dresses really are so much more than clothing items, and well, when it comes to it, they’re just really quite pretty.

A few weekends back I had two friends of friends tell me they read my blog and it’s a nice feeling to think of the little Broadsheet Boutique vines spreading out and creating a little network of its own. I guess this is the point of the blog after all, to spread a little conversation and link up with the people you couldn’t just meet for a coffee.

However, in saying that, it turns out you can meet for coffee after all. Last night saw a bloggers meet up at Pica Pica in Cardiff, which was attended by over 40 people. I didn’t manage to make it, due to long hours spent in the newsroom subbing the gorgeously flowery Mother’s Day Hwyl edition, which I have been proud editor of this week. However from friends who attended it sounded fantastic and it’s great that Cardiff has such a wide blogging network with the likes of Guardian Cardiff, Your Cardiff and Capture Cardiff. That’s a lot of Cardiff blogging love.

It seems blogging is the thing at the moment and Company Magazine has an entire issue devoted to the art this month. Here is their list of contributing bloggers and you can vote for your favourite.

I’d recommend having a look at “Random Acts of Reality” which is a blog through the eyes of a London-based ambulance worker and a really unique point of view.

With a mixture of fashion, food, mental health, politics, grief, dating and travel it goes to show you really can blog about anything, and that, perhaps is the beauty of blogging.