From playful and fun, to politically correct: Censoring Roald Dahl

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Roald Dahl books, nationally revered and loved by kids everywhere, are having lots of alterations made to them by woke, politically correct editors who want to appease snowflake adults.  Roald Dahl, nationally revered and loved by kids (lots of whom are also adults now), is also dead and unable to speak out against the censorship being placed on his books.

I am against censorship in books and I am against banning books; sanitising them isn’t too far off. There are books and authors whose writing I despise – but I don’t believe in rewriting or banning them. Even if it is Salman Rushdie.

It seems to me that people would rather pull the wool over their children’s eyes than use ‘offensive’ language as an opportunity to explain the real world to them; the real world which, might I add, is a lot worse than how Dahl portrayed it. And let’s be very honest, the reason we love those books so much is because that language is all around us; it’s playful and it’s descriptive and it’s something we understand. I’m sorry you don’t like the words ‘ugly’ and ‘attractive’, but they are adjectives that exist nonetheless. It makes no sense to censure the use of the word ‘ugly’ when it is being used to describe characters whose entire story is based on the fact that they are ugly (both inside and out). How do you rewrite that? Not to go all Hopkins-Clarkson-Morgan, but I don’t understand why we need gender-neutral terms in the books either. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why ‘Cloud-men’ is more offensive than ‘Cloud-people’. Why is the word ‘man’ offensive? Men and women, boys and girls, exist; this fact shouldn’t offend anyone, regardless of their own beliefs about gender. Are we going to rewrite every character in every book as gender-neutral? Must we rewrite Harry Potter as the person who lived? Read more

Old habits… die

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When I think back to days gone by — you know, the days before voluntary 10pm bedtimes, a strong aversion to teenagers, the discovery of more than a few grey hairs, and a tendency to feel every single ache under the sun — I remember being a 19-year-old caffeine-fuelled creative powerhouse who didn’t stop until the sun started to bleed into the night. Sometimes I was convinced it even rose a little later just to give me more time to myself, but maybe that was just me thinking the world fell at my feet whenever I willed it. That I could have anything I wanted. I was right, though; I could.

Unsurprisingly, it would take more than a spell of dizziness, a gnawing stomach, and tired eyes to break me from the almost physical connection I had to the keys on my laptop. Writer’s block? I didn’t know her. I wrote when I wanted to write, and my day ended when I wanted it to end. I was juggling a million different hobbies and somehow still able to squeeze twenty-five hours from a day for everything I wanted to do (and all the things I didn’t). My skin suffered, I was a little underweight, and everything I created was borne out of some sort of affliction, but I always had something to be proud of at the end of the day. That’s what kept me going – I was addicted to the dopamine I sorely lacked. In truth, I was never really living in the real world. I was living through each piece of art I created, and it showed, weighing heavy on my entire being, scrawled all over everything I produced. I lost touch with reality; it started with books, which plagued me with a billion different perspectives of the world and only managed to feed my cynicism, and then I turned to writing in an attempt to drain myself of all the excess poison in my mind. I’m not sure if what I wrote was good, or I just needed something to relate to – whichever it was, I made it appear, and it worked. I dare not revisit the things I used to create, but there was a lot of it. Read more

The Artist’s Dilemma

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I sat down to start this post in my usual fashion; with misery, cynicism, and a little self-loathing. But then I remembered that negativity begets negativity, and the last thing I need is another reason to beat myself up. So, I’ve picked the next closest thing: honesty.

I took yet another break from writing in general. People have told me and continue to tell me they love my blog posts, my copy, my short stories — whatever it may be — but I just… don’t believe them. Imposter syndrome, I believe they call it. Feelings of inadequacy that block us from ever proving to ourselves that we are better than we think we are. It’s a vicious cycle that I often struggle to break out of.
We create art to express ourselves and resonate with people, so when they tell us they want to see us or hear us, why can’t we deliver? Why do we feel like frauds in our field –surely I’m not meant to be in this club? You’ll find that this club is filled almost exclusively with people who are, in fact, very good at what they do. Conversely, there are a lot of people who produce ridiculously sub-par work, but because they believe they can get to the top with it, they soar. Right to the very top. Read more

I think I’m here, therefore I’m here(?)

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Or whatever Descartes said.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything on this blog. I have found myself drawn more to the throwaway simplicity of Substack; my creative (?) thoughts are sporadic and I have a very short attention span, even when it’s for myself. When I lay down at night, I jump from memory, to thought, to scene two in that same thought, to scene three, back to scene one to find out how else it could have played out, to a different thought altogether, to a horrible scenario that I hope will never happen but I’m now prepared for in case it does. Long blog posts don’t really do it for me, and I know they don’t really do it for anyone else, either. I talk about things succinctly (but often), I think about things forever and then write about them succinctly (I hope) (but often). Other times, there is waffle.

This is one of those times.

I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t been writing anything over the past couple of weeks because I’ve had fake nails on. I don’t know how you were expecting that sentence to end, but I know it wasn’t like that – maybe you expected simple writer’s block, being bogged down with work, a crisis in the family. And all of those things are true, but, for a writer, not nearly as debilitating as having long nails that prevent you from typing efficiently on the horrible flat butterfly keys of a 2015 Macbook that just won’t die. Let’s not tempt fate now, though, because, being older and closer to real adult life, I can’t afford my Macbook to die on me the same way I could when I was 19 and didn’t want to think about the future. I used to look into the future and see a black screen because, as far as I was concerned, I should have been dead already and anything that was to happen after that is a miracle in itself. Maybe miracle is the wrong word. Now, I look into the future and I panic because I wasted so much time being dead inside that I now have so much catching up to do; now, I look into the future and it’s not just about me – now, I see the white picket fence. Not really a white picket fence because, living in London, I know a small Tesco lorry will probably back into it and ruin everything. Maybe a big, strong, robust wall. And some barbed wire. And lots of CCTV and gates and deadlocks. Maybe a rottweiler.

I digress. But it’s also a nice illustration of how my thought process works. I get antsy, I can’t sit still. I get anxious, I get frustrated, I don’t know how to be calm. I am, quite simply, all over the place, all the time.

But sometimes, all the chaos must come to a stop and I am nowhere.

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Schumacher: A Review

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Tl;dr: if you’re not already a fan, don’t bother.

Or bother, but be prepared for some degree of boredom.

If you’ve watched the likes of Senna and Williams, you would have gone into this with high expectations. Michael Schumacher, seven-time world champion, indisputably one of the greatest F1 drivers there ever was and ever will be. A household name worldwide. You would be forgiven for expecting a gripping documentary full of passion and competitiveness, celebrating the life and career of a worldwide icon who has since suffered a horrific and devastating injury. If you know of Michael Schumacher but don’t know why you know of him, you would want the long-awaited title documentary to tell you exactly why he is known as one of the greatest.

Unfortunately, this just didn’t deliver.

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PSA: Social media is f*cking you up. Again.

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A while ago (almost a year and a half ago, actually. I’m weeping at the passage of time as I write this), I wrote a post about social media and how it largely irks me, though I have yet to find a way to escape these shackles with which I am bound.

I’m happy to admit that my sentiments haven’t changed and I’m still a bitter old lady waving her cane around. I guess the youth I complain about also includes my own generation to an extent (though my smile lines and diminishing metabolism would like to disagree) because we pretty much still also shape what the future will be like.

Social media is a little different, though.

I think it’s always influenced by the youngest. I’m slowly withering away and there’s a reason I have no idea how to do Tik Tok dances; I still mourn the loss of “buffting” and I like thin eyebrows. The problem with the youngest ducklings, those spring chickens, is that they’re a group of conflicted people who don’t really know what they stand for – through no real fault of their own. Growing up in the age of social media means you’re constantly ingesting new information at rapid speed every day; you never had time to form your own opinions before thousands of others were thrust upon you (in Freudian terms, you kissed goodbye to the id at birth). Even before you made a Twitter account, the opinions you heard from others were shaped by recycled opinions they read online; there’s little authenticity in anything and validation is the goal. You melt at the touch of any sort of offence (see: snowflake), and simultaneously like to compensate for this fragility by going a thousand steps too far and making disgusting jokes under the guise of ‘I just have a dark sense of humour’. No, you don’t. You’re confused.

I’ve revisited my old post in celebration of Social Media day, and I’ve decided to give my two penneth again now that I’m a little older, not much wiser, and a bit less angry – but lockdowns forced me to spend an obscene amount of time online so I’m now obviously an expert in the field. 

Let’s discuss. Read more