all five horizons

In the summer of 1986, I was particularly taken with a young woman with attitude called Madonna asking her papa not to preach. I thought she was the bees knees. On watching her video, presumably on Top of the Pops as this was in the days pre-MTV (it’s hard enough to remember when MTV played videos, let alone when we didn’t have it at all), my mum tutted loudly with disapproval. I took real umbrage at this; how dare she tut at my new heroine?!

When I asked Mum why she was tutting, I do not remember exactly what she said but I am sure she would have called her either vulgar or common (her favourite insult).  When pressed for a little clarification, it became clear that the source of the problem was not (necessarily) that the song was about teenage pregnancy (although in hindsight I realise this might have got up her nose a bit).  Nor was it the fact that she snogs the face off the delicious and grubby looking Alex McArthur (although again, this may have had something to do with it!  Also, I really had a major 10 year old’s crush on him.  Swoon!).

The problem was the shirt she was wearing in the video.

I remember being very surprised and confused by this. I remember vehemently defending Madonna’s pride in her Italian heritage. I remember saying to my mum ‘It just means that she thinks that Italians do things better, in general.” I remember not really understanding what my mum thought it really meant.  I remember thinking I knew best (something that still happens, unfortunately).

Innocence is understanding the concept of teenage pregnancy but not really understanding exactly how it happens. And not knowing what ‘doing it’ means. Sadly, Madonna’s shirt will remain an untested hypothesis as far as this blogger is concerned.

One of the things that took the longest for this new site was the ‘about me’ section on the home page.  Generally, I hate having to fill in the profile section online.  They seem to be everywhere: MySpace, Good Reads, Wordpress, Flickr, Etsy, Twitter - they all want you to describe yourself so that the world can see what kind of person you are.  I get it, you know.  I understand the importance of it.  I myself will choose to follow someone on Twitter or subscribe to their blog if I like what they say in their profile (though this is by no means the only thing I will go on).

But when I am asked to write about myself, I get stuck.  It’s not like I am shy or secretive about myself.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am pretty open and if anything, I share too much.  My problem is that I don’t feel like I have anything in my life that defines me.  My job, which I am really enjoying, is not really something I want to define me:  VAT reclaim agent is hardly very sexy.  The person I am to other people: wife/daughter/sister/friend/auntie, these are all very generic and I don’t feel that comfortable with being defined in that way.  Plus the one thing I want to be is not on that list - if or when I can add ‘mother’ maybe I will feel differently about that.  So that just leaves what I do.  How I spend my time.  And this is where I start to realise how half-assed I am at everything I do.  I am a part-time everything.  I am an ocassional crafter.  I am a sometimes reader.  I am geeky but not really into it enough or knowledgable enough to wear the badge with any authenticity.  I write but only on my blog which is not really writing.  And that is when I realised that whilst I couldn’t come up with a nice catchy list of labels to descibe myself, this whole blog would have do that job for me.

After a lot of faffing around with stylesheets (ooh still so much to learn about CSS), plugins, webhosts, ftp and all manner of other bits and pieces which are all new to me, I am finally in a position to start blogging again here in my new blog home. Things still don’t look exactly as I would like but I am pretty pleased with what I have got so far. So, let me show you around!

The home page will be not contain any original material but will act as an introduction to me and a taster of all five blogs. The welcome page will change perdiocally. You can see new posts from all five horizons on the home page’s right sidebar.

This Journal blog is pretty self-explanatory. I will be blogging about stuff that happens, funny things I see, anything I want to share that does not fit into the other, more specific categories. My ‘New Things’ page started on my old blog is back and I am pleased that I am on track to trounce my last year’s list of 36 (ish) new things.

Square Eyes is my TV and movie blog (which used to be here) and will be my place to be frivolous and low-brow. Do not expect any arthouse or world cinema (although I wouldn’t rule it out completely) – I am more like to moan about Dawson or Vaughn dying (I will be blogging about old TV as well as new due to my extensive boxset collection!).

Spinning Infinity is my music blog (which used to live here). It was the addition of this third blog (well, fourth if you count my photoblog) which made me question having so many separate sites. I wanted to bring everything together so that someone reading my TV blog would realise I also wrote about other junk. Anyway, I will post about CDs, gigs and music in general here.

Caged Birds and Mockingbirds is where I get just a little bit intellectual. For the past 4 years, I have been studying for a Literature degree in my spare time. Reading is important to me and my love of books is profound. With this new book blog, I will be sharing this love.

Finally(!), Patchwork and Pins is my craft blog. There are two main reasons for wanting a separate craft blog: a) some people, quite shockingly, are not interested in the crap I make and so they can choose to ignore this entirely and b) if I have a dedicated blog, the older the previous post gets, the more I will feel pressured to make something. I desperately want to improve, make more things and I always work better with a deadline!

So that is about it! Should you want to subscribe using a feed reader, the rss feeds for each individual blog are at the top. The feed for all five blogs together is here (and also at the top of the home page). If you want to subscribe to a couple of the blogs and combine them into one feed, use Feedblendr! I hope you will stop by and leave me some encouraging comments so that I don’t think this has all been a colossal waste of my time!!!