Dear Kingston Odeon...

To all the staff members at Kingston Odeon,

Today I visited your cinema with my two younger brothers (aged 3 and 5) and grandmother who is currently over from the USA visiting us. We went in to see the Minions movie as my brothers are obsessed with the little yellow trouble makers. We used the self service section to purchase our tickets but then went to buy drinks and snacks for the film. The man who served us was incredibly friendly and helpful and made us feel important. The woman checking our tickets was smiling and sweet. She pointed us towards the escaltor going down to our screen and off we went.

That was when it went wrong.

My 3 year old brother is scared of escalators and his panic over getting on it cause the older one to panic and fall, dropping his popcorn. I couldn't find the emergency stop button so dropped all my stuff, told my youngest brother to stay put and went running down after him to pick him up as my grandmother could not really help him. We reached the bottom, got off safely and hit the emergency stop. I ran back up the stairs to see another man had come along to help keep an eye on my brother and see what had happened, clearly having been called over by the girl at the ticket desk. He stayed with my brother, until I got back, gave us a new popcorn bucket and two more toys from the kids mix as both of my brothers had clearly been scared and distressed. He also topped up my own popcorn which my brother had accidentally knocked over. He pointed us towards the elevator which made my brother feel much more comfortable.

After the movie we took the lift back up to the foyer where we were stopped by the manager to ask if we'd been given our vouchers as both my brothers were dressed as minions. She then fetched vouchers to give them both free entry to another film within the next month and took a picture of them both dressed in their costumes.

Overall, we were really impressed with the help and service, especially as it was the 3 year old's first cinema trip. I hope that this reaches all the staff involved as I would really like to thank them for all the effort put into their jobs. As somebody who works in customer service, I know it's not always easy and that you can very quickly lose your enthusiasm.

You were all amazing!

Much thanks,
The sister of the two boys in minion tops (that everybody commented on!)

A Little Rant (Cause why else would I be here?)

So I haven't been to my history class in quite a few weeks. Bad, I know. I have reasons though. I mean... A good few months worth of my photography went missing so spending 5/6 weeks trying to re do all of it? Is it more acceptable? What about having issues with anxiety? Is that okay to miss some lessons for? What about some personal issues (including a death in the family)? Is it okay yet?

My history teacher doesn't think so. I've been threatened with punishment if I don't turn up to lesson tomorrow.

Now my plan for tomorrow was to not go to college. Stay at home, get photography 100% finished and revise for the English exam I have Friday. Now I have to spend an hour and a half travelling each way to college as well as an hour in lesson. So that's 4 hours out of my day tomorrow. I also have to catch up 5 weeks in one night. Which also takes out of my time for revision for Friday and redoing photography.

It might not be the best thing to do but I really think it's the best thing for me right now.


p.s. thanks for the added stress teacher. It's caused me to have more panic attacks. I hope you're happy with yourself for further fucking with my mental health! :)

Too Long to Tweet: Zayn Malik

I love All Time Low. They are my favourite band. If they broke up or one of them left, I would be devastated. I wouldn't cut or threaten to kill myself over it. This is coming from somebody who has struggled with depression and associated issues in the past.

Y'all need to calm down. He's not dead, it's not the end of the world. He's left a band. Give it until the end of the year and he'll either be back or a solo artist. Please, don't do anything drastic and definitly don't go cutting yourself/attempting suicide.

I don't care what you say about photoshop. THIS is why the media is fucked up.

NewsQuest Young Reporters Scheme: Student View in Light of the NUJ article

As an aspiring journalist and editor of my college's student magazine, when I heard about the opportunity to sign up for the young reporters scheme, I jumped at the chance. Myself and six other members of the magazine all put our names on a list which was sent to the organisers. The issue was, we had heard about the scheme at the last minute so we didn't know much about it.

In a reply email from one of the organisers, I was given the information about how young reporters works and it sounded far less interesting. It didn't really sound like something that was engaging or of much use to me, five of the other members of the magazine felt the same way. In a conversation with one of them, they said "It's not interesting because we can't write about anything controversial." which is true. The most exciting things we can write about are trees being cut down or a mildly exotic animal in the Thames. This will be of interest to some people but as teenagers we often like to rebel against the "social norms" of older generations making controversial topics, such as abortion, gay marriage and the ethics of artists selling music through sex, really interesting topics for us to write about. 

However, this wouldn't be a problem, right? Surely we could just drop out of the scheme, no biggie. Wrong. What nobody had been told about was the charge. £100 just for the college to sign up plus £20 for each student. With seven of us signed up, that was £240 when we hadn't been given proper information for the scheme before signing up, leading six of us to change our minds. As far as I'm aware, my college was in fact charged a full £240, especially as I'm still on the e-mailing list for the scheme.

That's how I heard about this. An e-mail from one of the organisers. The e-mail stated that the article written on them by NUJ was misleading and incorrect but, in my opinion, one incorrect fact in an article on the scheme does not mean that people should dislike young reporters. The article stated that it costs £120 for students to take part in the scheme and it was made to sound, in the opening of the article, as if this was the cost per student. However, further on in the article it is explained that the cost is £100 for the school/college to sign up and £20 additionally for students. Personally, I still think this cost is outrageous.

In summary, my feelings on the scheme are that it is overpriced, misleading and of little interest to students. They claim to give good experience to students but I have gained far more experience on my college's student magazine and pod cast. Now, I fully accept not all schools and college have the facilities to run a pod cast, ours is quite... all over the place and badly organised. But there is not reason that a school/college can't have a student run magazine. If students are willing to run it, you need one staff member who will oversee the running of the magazine. Students can then use their own initiative to then produce the magazine with a team of editors and the availability for all students to write their articles and get published. The school/college is then responsible to decide if this is printed or virtual meaning there is no reason for it to cost money as it can be left on the Internet rather than printed. This allows students so much more freedom in subjects they cover as well as a larger readership because we can write about abortion, gay marriage and the ethics of artists selling music through sex, not a strange duck being spotted in the Thames. 

Because as much as we don't want to write about that, others want to read about it even less.

Other things to read on this topic:

NUJ's article on the Young Reporters Scheme

Young Reporter's response to the article

I'm Writing (Another) Story?!

For those of you who are unaware, hopefully this is all of you, I previously wrote an entire story called 'Undead April' which told the story of a group of school kids in Ireland who fought their way through a zombie apocalypse. The cover of the book was made from a picture of a sunset I took in Ireland that I had then manipulated the contrast on and turned red, then added some writing to make a cover. Really creative cover. The whole thing was awful.

I'm incredibly hopeful that this is no longer up on the internet. I'm fairly sure it's gone. I think I deleted the account I put it on. I mean, at the time I thought it was great. I was all "yeah, I finished writing a story. I even wrote a dedication in the front. Aren't I awesome?" No Sophie. No you were not.

It's 7060 words in length and the dedication reads as follows:

"For my partners in crime Lily, Connor, Harry, Aisling, Jess, Ash and Aly. 

And Evan. You violent sod."

 Not exactly my most proud achievement. Dedicating a book to the friends who were the characters. Oh and my boyfriend. My absolute scum bucket of a boyfriend. I was 14 okay?

So, leaving this in the past... my goal for this year is to finish writing a book I can actually be proud of. So far, I've managed to write the first chapter and part of a prologue. Basically because I'm struggling with character development.

The story revolves around six main characters. Three girls, three guys. All of varying background. It's set in a London college this time rather than back end of nowhere Ireland. Oh, and there are no zombies. I'm done with writing about zombies.

So far, I've managed to form a strong connect with two of these characters, Jasey and Calix. Jasey is a 16 year old girl who dresses mostly in black skinny jeans, black converse and an ever growing array of band merch. Her closest friends are Stella and Holly and she plays drums, guitar and bass. Calix, on the other hand, is an 18 year old college resit who's smarter than he lets on. He has a fairly good dress sense and wears far more colour than Jasey. The other 4 central characters include a nerd, a popular singer, a smart and crazy future doctor and an egotistical womanizer named after a god of war. I think I've got enough diversity in the characters.

Anyway, not to spoil the plot as, hopefully, it'll get read at the end of the year. Buuuuut... expect some comedy and failed romance. Actually... maybe you should expect failed comedy too.

So yeah, hopefully this will be better. I shall leave you with a short extract from 'Undead April' just to embarass myself and prove my point. Like I said... I was 14.

The first zombie to appear was coming up the hill towards us. 1 smash with the fire extinguisher and it was splashed against the railings. But we had about 5 minutes to walk up the street before we reached Fallons. Finn hit a girl I recognised from the local supermarket. We started to see a few zombies dressed in school uniform. I noticed a girl in my class who had always gotten on my nerves. I slapped her with the extinguisher. She didn’t fall down but she stumbled back. I hit her again and she fell down. I bashed her head a few more times and ran on. Finn was fighting off one trying to bite him. I gave it a sharp blow to the head and we continued down the street.

One Year Single

January 30th 2014. My boyfriend and I broke up.

I'm not still sad. I have moved on. You know what? It's great! Being single is a lot easier than being in a relationship because it's a lot less effort. When we broke up, it was a Thursday. My photography coursework was due in the next day so I went in early and spent the entire day sticking photos to pieces of cardboard. I hardly talked to anyone, just kept to myself. Then it was the weekend and I just kept away from social media and my phone.

Monday rolls around and I suddenly realised. "Hey, that guy is quite cute. In fact... He's really rather hot. I see him every week, how have I not noticed how attractive he is before?" I was in a relationship. I wasn't looking around. That's why I'd failed to notice. I developed a minor crush on this guy, nothing that made me want to act on it, but a minor crush. Apparently this was the same as every other girl who knew him.

But time went on. I met another guy who was SO not my type and yet... I was strangely into him. I guess it was around May I developed a crush on him and, as I have mentioned before on my blog, we had a flirtationship over the summer. It was, at least on my end, you're attractive, make me laugh and the only other person dumb enough to be online at 4am. What can I say, I'm not a big sleeper.

What I didn't write in a previous blog post, mostly because this happened afterwards, was that I actually decided to tell this guy I like him. Not because I wanted a serious relationship with him. I merely figured "This guy is flirting, I like him. Why not? A little bit of fun never hurt anybody." but not no avail. Turns out, he's just an extremely flirty guy and he didn't like him back. But, I'm pretty good at getting over people... Though this may have taken a whole week! Then my friend text him. From my phone. Lets just say this guy and I have spoken once since. Very briefly.

But I think my most important experience from this guy is how his best friend behaves. You know when someone gives you a dirty look? He always does that to me... but in stare form. It annoys me to hell and back. I swear one day I'm gonna bring Satan's pitchfork back with me and whack him across the head with it. Take a picture, it'll last longer dumbass.

And then there's one last guy. I like him. He likes me. We're not bf/gf but we're seeing each other and flirting very openly. This is quite nice. We're taking it slow, not rushing. I feel comfortable with it so far and that's always important.

The point I'm trying to make here is that being single gives you chances to experience things you wouldn't otherwise experience and it allows you to grow, something I really feel I've done over the last year.

Here's to 2015!

Girls Who Prefer Having Guy Friends

There's been a lot of hate on the internet recently to girls who prefer spending time with guys. This pisses me right off. I am a girl. My best friend is a guy. My closest friends are also all guys bar one. One.

Now, I don't see what's wrong with this. It's a personal preference. I sit and chat with a group of girls and it tends to be about boys, make up, hair, clothes... You get the picture. I don't find this interesting. However when I sit and chat with a group of guys... For one, topics seem to vary more. It might be about sport which I mostly have no interest in. It might be about films, TV shows, music, their college subjects... I know "girls talk about this stuff too." Buuuut I tend to find girls are often more into reality shows so if I want to talk about The Vampire Diaries, Arrow, Gotham, Flash, The Walking Dead, Sherlock, Modern Family... I have to talk to my mate Ali. (Okay, so he doesn't watch TWD. My point still stands.)

Yeah, some girls like the same music as me. But often they don't. The music I like isn't exactly popular so finding someone who has an agreeable taste is hard. But guys are often less judgemental and don't say shit like "that sounds like eeemooo music." I mean seriously? It's a damned Christmas song!

Why is it that girls who only hang out with girls don't get that kinda hate? They're still picking one gender over the other. Just because I pick guys over girls I'm meant to be a misogynist? Surely that argument can be used on any girl who is straight because she'd date a guy over a girl.

Do you see my point?