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Book Review: Sophie Kinsella, What Does it Feel Like?

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Book Review: Sophie Kinsella, What Does it Feel Like? I first stumbled across Sophie Kinsella's books back in 2004, with one of the Shopaholic series, as part of a reading challenge. It's safe to say I fell in love with her books and have kept returning to them over the years. 'What Does it Feel Like' is her most personal novel(its a novella) yet, about her experience of being diagnosed with Glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer with no known cure. The book begins before the main character Eve's diagnosis. Eve is a writer and is being interviewed about her writing and family. You get a real sense of someone who appreciates how lucky they are to be living the life they are.  Eve is out walking around the shops in a break from her writing when, reminiscent of a scene from one of her books, she falls in love with a dress in the window of a boutique, which sparks off a new book idea. Next, we see her hitting the ultimate high as her novel is turned into a fil
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Me Too in 2023:

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 I don't know about you but what a decade 2023 has been so far....the world's on the brink of war, you need a mortgage to buy a pack of butter, and to top it all off, harassment of women, both virtual and face to face, is worse than ever. I've never known anything like it. I can only speak for myself of course and truth be told, I feel a bit nervous writing about this -the original title was 'Me too in 2022' so you can only imagine how long I've been mulling it over for. I've recently read ''Sex Power Money' by Sara Pascoe - click here to check it out, and it's given me so much food for thought.  I've also recently done a course that has made me see how different growing up as a teenager in the late 90s is to teenagers who grow up now, where, particularly male behaviour, accepted back then as 'boys being 'boys and 'banter' would no way be acceptable now. Sara Pascoe puts forward what at first I found a bit of a controvers
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Lewis Capaldi, Sheffield 2023

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  I was quite late to discovering Lewis Capaldi's music, as when he burst onto the music scene- who remembers his first Brits speech, and the contrast between that one and the next?!-I'd been going through quite a difficult time in my personal life and, it's no exaggeration to say, that the songs on 'Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent' really saved me, a light in the dark of a pitch black tunnel I just couldn't see a way out of, metaphorically speaking. So when tickets went on sale for his 2023 tour I was over the moon to be lucky enough to get one. Unsurprisingly the whole tour sold out in one second, although Lewis has now announced new shows in Edinburgh and Chepstow this summer.  I'm not good in crowds at the best of times, so when I realised there would be 15,000 people at Sheffield's Utilita Arena, I'm not gonna lie and tell you my heart wasn't racing with anxiety. The excitement in the Arena was palpable, the only thing I really have
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Going viral: how I turned online bullying on its head to double my social media following

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Going viral: how I turned online bullying on its head to double my social media reach in ten days    Last summer, I had a post on TikTok that went viral.  It was a jokey reply to a troll and I had no idea that I would go from, in the morning having around 56,000 likes(still blows my mind), to jump to 105,000 in a number of hours.  I joined TikTok in the summer of 2021-though it took me a little while to have the confidence to post, I was off sick from work and partly felt I was a bit old(at 39 on an app that as far as I was aware, was mainly used by teenagers -how wrong I was, in the most amazing way.)  I'd been getting bored of Facebook for a while.  Like many people, when I first started using Facebook in 2007, it was great to reconnect with friends I'd lost touch with as well as -let's face it, we've all done it -get a sneak peek into whether the cool girls from school were still flawless, check out mutual friend's holiday photos, but over time I realised there
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B is for Barcelona, Baristas &Board Games

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 Greetings from South Somerset, not far from Glastonbury. It seems fitting as someone who has always loved singing and dancing that I should end up living so near to the home of music.   When I was a kid there was a time for about five years when we didn't have a TV. Growing up in the late 80s and early 90s, there was no social media, but I don't remember ever feeling left out from my friends, or bored. I think because my sister was a lot older than me, I was on my own a lot and this was vital in harnessing my creativity. So I made up stories. Now, aged 40, with a birthday coming up, I'm still making up stories-let's face it, the state of the world in 2023, a bit of escapism is something we could ALL benefit from... I've tried to curb my addiction to caffeine over the years but have come to the conclusion that I love it too much(strong, two brown sugars, oat milk if you're asking), I don't smoke, I hardly drink at the moment, I wouldn't call coffee a vic
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A is for Apple, Ariana Grande&Awesomeness

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 A is for  Apple, Ariana Grande&Awesomeness A really should be for 'allo, because it feels like an aeon and a half since I last posted here. The world's on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, a global pandemic has been and gone(kind of), and I'm still over here writing. But enough about me. How have you been? I can't quite believe it's nearly three years since I posted here. It feels like a lifetime ago, I feel like a lucky cat with nine lives, a few have been used up and finally, after the most chaotic and yet at times calm and peaceful life, it's time for a new chapter. It seems fitting too that there are lots of departures and returns in the world of politics, music, and books. The UK has just welcomed a new Prime Minister-just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than Boris. The speech about Pork Markets alone shows a woman wildly out of touch with what is going on in the world. Which leads on nicely to new music, and as Lewis Capaldi has just
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