Naught to sixty. Or ten.

In a plan to tackle my 2016 goals, I'm going to take you on a journey. A 10k journey.

I am writing this as a promise to myself. And that promise means several things:

1. When I am old I would like to recall tales of battling the elements to my grandchildren, tell them how I would run through anything just to get some weekly exercise.
2. As part of my new life, fitness is key. It's a key part of my job and will become a key part of my personal development. Fitter people get ahead. And probably boyfriends too.
3. It's a physical thang. My jeans don't fit, I refuse to buy clothes a size up, and last time I checked I was considerably heavier than at my peak of fitness last year.

So, ultimately, I need to put down the beer and burgers and pick up some weights. Or, better than that, strap on some Nikes and Just Do It.

Today, I join a gym.

Today, I lose junk food.

Today, I stop making excuses and start making progress. 

(Wish me luck.)

Six goals for 2016

As an interesting experiment, I’ve set six goals for 2016 and will review them again at the end of the year. Or at the end of every month. It really depends on how much content I have.

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. They’re proven to fail, you can set them at any other time of the year, and I often end up picking something rubbish like “go to the gym”, where the only pounds I lose are straight out of my purse.

This year, as I’m starting with a completely clean slate – no job, no boyfriend, no house – I’ve decided to do something a little different. Instead of setting resolutions, I’m setting goals.

With six goals to accomplish in 2016, I can reasonably look to achieve one per every two months. So here they are, my demons, motivators and expectations for the year ahead:

1. Get a job
   
2. Move out of your parent’s house before it’s too late. You’ve only have two more years before it gets really sad.
   
3. Lose 12 lbs (one each month, easy does it)
   
4. Explore places, including:
1. Newquay
2. Isle of Wight
3. Ireland
4. Amsterdam
5. Manchester
6. Parma
7. … Hong Kong?
   
5. Run 10k. You’ve been saying you’re going to do it for two years. Just get on with it. JUST DO IT. And eat some vegetables while you’re at it, you’re nearly 23 for God’s sake.
   
6. Date. Properly. Perhaps once a month. Maybe. Let’s not push it. A little less 2016 a little more touch me.

So that's it. Six goals, twelve months. That's nice and realistic right?

Now for the tricky part... Completing them.

It might be a new dawn, but it's what you do with it that counts

Jobless, boyfriendless and living at home with my parents. Starting from the bottom. Happy New Year to me.

No job, no partner, no bills – no problem. 2015 was both vile and wonderful in equal parts, but when asked if I would relive the year of plenty, the answer was no. No, I would not.

When 2016 loomed, I knew I had a choice. To do what I'd always done, and get what I'd always got, or mix things up a bit. Surely things couldn't get much worse.

In November 2015, after a season of dithering, I made up my mind. I began throwing out my stuff at home, handed in my four week's notice and tried to convince my mother that at nearly 23 years old, maybe it was time I gave being independent a go.

Now, fresh off a plane and blinking my squinty eyes into 2016, I've reached the point where all my plans have come to a halt. My page is blank. My slate is clean. I'm staring into the abyss and dawn is about to break.

So, before everything changes and I get a fabulous job, have a string of lovers and become beautiful overnight circa Shakira, let's review the starting point...

• Weight: more pounds than my bank account aka 138lbs.

• Hair: blonde, although rocking some seriously 80s roots, and collar length. One haircut in 2015 did wonders for length, as opposed to the "recommended for growth" 6-8 weekly cuts I had in 2014.
  
  Mental note: cutting hair makes it shorter.

• Dating life: ten months single, humbly extended my six-month dating hiatus to be indefinite. Last official date: April 2015.
  
  Things worse than going on a first date include: being eaten alive by a giant snake, the flu and war. Things better than going on a first date include, but certainly aren't limited to, getting something pierced, listening to Nickelback for 24 hours solid and a bikini wax.

• Home life: living rent-free, bill minimum and tight-lipped. What more can you expect from living with your parents? No matter how old you are, you'll have to say where you're going, when you're coming back and if you're going to be back for dinner.

• Work life: hahahahaunemployedhahaha

It'll be interesting to come back to this at the end of 2016 and see how starting from scratch turned out. It's pretty safe to say I'm starting this year with a blank sheet of paper. It's a new dawn, it's a new year, it's a new life. Hopefully...

A song of praise for Carys Bray

The third and final in a series of articles on the novels shortlisted for the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize discusses A Song For Issy Bradley, written by my now-Twitter-pal Carys Bray. Spoilers as always.

I picked up Bray’s novel in a library. My first library book since university, I stared at the cover and decided to read a few chapters before I checked it out and made any real commitment. 

Instantly I knew this was a very different book to the other two shortlisters I’d reviewed. The content was drastically different. It was less female-centric, for starters, and it was going to teach me about something I really had very little grounding in before. The Mormon faith.

The religion and its practices almost take on a character of itself in the novel. You see how it behaves and what its features are, how it affects people – whether it’s a hero or an anti-hero is open to interpretation. Does it save or capture? Who can tell?

The thing that shone through in this novel is the first-hand experience of it all. The fears, experiences and thought-process all seem to come from a very real place. So when the worst happens, my grief to what was a fictional event, felt very, very real. And when expressing that fact on twitter, I got a very real response from the woman responsible.

Great community spirit Carys. 

What I liked so much about this was how I really wanted these characters to be OK. I didn’t feel particularly strongly that I liked or didn’t like any of them, I just felt the human will of community driving my wish that they’d be OK, they’d make it through their grief and their heartbreak and they’d be a family again. And, more than that, how I was fascinated by how they dealt with it in terms of their faith.

I finished Bray’s the quickest out of all the Desmond Elliot shortlisters, and that stands as a testament to how much I enjoyed it. Touchingly sensitive and emotionally compelling, A Song For Issy Bradly was my favourite of all three.

Read my opinion on representations of women in the competitor for the prize, Emma Healey's Elizabeth is Missing, or check out what I thought of 2015’s prize winner Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller.

Claire Fuller's endless enrichment of female character

The second in a series of articles on the novels shortlisted for the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize discusses another debut, Claire Fuller's award winning Our Endless Numbered Days. Spoilers as always.

The story of my connection with Our Endless Numbered Days begins in June 2014, eight months before it's UK launch. That month, I received an email inviting me to a job interview, which I aced, accepted the job, and began working. The woman who emailed me was on holiday when I started the position, but two weeks later I met the person who originally vetted my application – Claire Fuller.

Which puts me in a rather unique position, one which I haven't been in before when talking about, well, anything. But, if my literature degree taught me anything, it's that the author doesn't really have much impact on a book. Except the writing part, of course.

Our Endless Numbered Days: title inspired by an obscure band's album (how very Winchester), winner of the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize, and dramatic, genre-bordering thriller.

Quick plot summary: when Peggy is eight, her father – essentially – abducts her, taking her to an abandoned Hütte in the middle of absolute nowhere, or somewhere in Europe, as far as we can tell.

The novel is told entirely from Peggy's point of view, firstly from her eight year old self, up until she's 17. And for me, this is what I found most gripping.

Firstly, I like to think that Fuller (can I call her Claire? I know her as Claire) Claire chose her protagonist's gender based on more than personal experience. Take a moment to imagine if the abducted child was a boy.

The differences aren't vast at first – male and female eight year olds are quite similar in their physical and behavioural development – but I wonder if the father would even have taken a boy? Boys aren't as vulnerable as girls, or as delicate. With a female protagonist, she can remain under her father's rule no matter what. He will always be physically superior. With a male protagonist, he will eventually grow stronger and become an alpha. No matter the bond, a boy is far more likely to dominate eventually. And, if it was a boy, the ending would be very different.

Secondly, the development of the character would have taken a different turn indeed. Let's not forget, Peggy is in the woods during the most intimate physical development of her life – puberty. As a female reader – who's a practical thinker even in the most fictional of times – I couldn't help but think of questions like, what happens when Peggy gets her first period? Foliage sanitary towels?!

In this sense, readers are a lot closer to her sheer vulnerability and the extent of how feral her father has forced her to be. It's a far more impactful passage to read rather than a sentence about an awkward morning boner.

And finally, let's talk hair. Well, by that I mean enforced standards of beauty in the Western world.

Claire really effectively paints a portrait of the importance of beauty standards through what Peggy has missed out on. When she returns home, choosing clothes is a subject which absolutely baffles her. Peggy doesn't have any idea about beauty or about all these standards for women, because she hasn't learnt them. She hasn't needed to know how to brush her hair to survive, or how to accessorise. They weren't skills which would keep her alive throughout cold winters. In fact, they're entirely unnecessary. But only when she's in the Western world that she's subjected to comments on her appearance. There's a lot of this kind of comment on YA fiction at the moment, just take a look at The Hunger Games. In fact, I'd like to think Peggy and Katniss could be friends.

It's really refreshing to tear into a novel which so breaks the convention of women, especially young women, in literature. And following Peggy's development is more than fascinating, it's a complete breath of fresh air to see her emotional, mental and physical progression in such a unique environment. Despite the novel's self-limited environment, number of characters and subject matter, Peggy's character is so rich and unique, it's no wonder it won the Desmond Elliott Prize.

My copy looks like this. Yes it's signed. Yes, I went to the book launch. #humblebrag

Read my opinion of other representations of women in competitor for the prize, Emma Healey's Elizabeth is Missing.