The Rebel Poetess

  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 ...

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 reali...

 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...