This is the Year it All Will Happen…Tablets, Jobs, Love, Sex and Cath Kidston
This year I will get a tablet, a gadget resembling an ipad not an aspirin. I will be better at my job and earn more money for doing less. I will be more compassionate to my fellow human beings but I won’t leave a tip for indifferent service; give my tube seat up for muffin tops with heavy shopping or cease bus stop queue jumping. I will make more time for my love life even during Match of the Day when my team is featured. I will embrace my x chromosome by bigging up designer Cath Kidson rather than obsessing about Drake (the Canadian Rapper famous for stating that the square root of 69 is 8 something, not a male duck).
Cath Kidson
This is the year it will all happen.
“Be original, stick to your guns”, like Cath Kidson, is my mantra for twenty eleven.
Kidson is often written-off as a modern Laura Ashley. A purveyor of overly feminine floral designs that hark back to a simpler time. The opposite of cutting edge.
However, there is more to Cath than meets the eye. She is an innovator in the mould of Steve Jobs at Apple. She is truly one of Britain’s most talented designers. She is also a rebel that followed her own path.
Arriving in London at the age of 18, Kidston spent “seven years of aimlessness” working in various shops. As a sideline she began developing her own ideas, such as buying rolls of Aertex and making them into shirts. Her father died of cancer when she was 19, leaving her little money and forcing her to re-evaluate her life. Then her mother also died of cancer: “That made me realise how important it was to take opportunities when they present themselves to you.”
After scoring her “first grown-up job” with Haslam, she went on to set up an interiors business with Shona McKinney, a friend, before branching out on her own in 1993.
She invested £15,000 of her own savings in her first shop on Clarendon Cross, a narrow street that links Holland Park and Notting Hill, where she attracted interest from the trustafarian crowd and young mothers.
Yet she was working against the grain. “The whole vintage thing didn’t kick off until the late 1990s,” she recalled last year. “I remember feeling quite broke and making cushions myself to sell in the shop, and the embarrassment of a woman coming up to the counter and saying, ‘Excuse me, but this is really badly made — could I get a discount?’ ”
At first she ran a decorating business downstairs to pay the bills, while upstairs offering a selection of car boot-sale finds, vintage fabrics and wallpapers and old furniture covered in gloss paint. Word spread slowly. Then one day Miuccia Prada, the Italian fashion designer, walked into the shop and bought “a pile of things”, so she thought she must be doing something right.
At the age of 37 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy and was deprived of the chance to have children of her own. According to Allsopp, she is devoted to her stepdaughter and her siblings. For the past 12 years she has worked with Marie Curie Cancer Care, which funds treatment of the terminally ill in their homes. “For me it’s a perfectly selfish thing to do,” she told the Financial Times, “because it makes me feel better. I’ve learnt that if you give, you get back in spades.”
In the end, she took the lead and triumphed. Her designs are everywhere, from curtains to iphones.
This year I am going to focus on leading rather than coming in second – only losers say it’s taking part that matters. To do this I will concentrate on my positives (I’m empathetic although I’d rather be telepathic), on my successes (reached level 3 on Angry Birds) rather than dwelling on my weaknesses (I find it difficult to load dishwasher or remember birthdays).
Hopefully this will build my confidence and enable me to do more leading and less hiding in the corner.
What makes Cath Kidson’s designs special is how uplifting they are. They reflect her character. Her ability to stay positive and generous in spite of tragedies that could have left her bitter and resentful.
Android Tablet not ipad
Behold: the MOTOROLA XOOM with Android Honeycomb, Motorola’s new tablet coming soon on Verizon.
I want no part of Apple’s walled garden. I want to be treated as an adult not a teenager. Apple censors creativity, it vets every iphone, ipad or mac app. It does not allow porn or any other kind of what it considers ‘wrong thinking’. Sure their devices are shiny and well made but they are also uniform, closed and sterile.
I want to rebel against conformity. Not to be a sheep, no matter how appealing. Google has developed a platform for boy’s toys called Android. Its symbol, human-like green rubbish bin (trash can) rather than a tempting ripe fruit. Android is open so anyone can use it. I have an Android phone that allows me to use flash (used for web based games and video). The Android app store is like a pirate’s treasure chest bulging with p2p applications for free mp3s, sexy picture apps, free games and subversive hacking tools.
A sneak peek at Android 3.0, Honeycomb, the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets.
Google names each android version after an ‘after’ (desert) in alphabetic order so 1.6 is cupcake; 2.1 is éclair; 2.2 is frozen yoghurt (froyo) and 2.3 is gingerbread. The tablet version of the OS is version 3 and is called honeycomb.
I will buy the first sub $500 honeycomb tablet by a known manufacturer.
Steve Jobs
Although I dislike his products hence I’m an Android not Apple fanboy, I admire his rebelliousness. From Wikipedia:
Jobs was born in San Francisco and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. Jobs’ biological parents – Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian graduate student who later became a political science professor, and Joanne Simpson, an American graduate student who went on to become a speech therapist – later married, giving birth to and raising Jobs’ biological sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.
Jobs travelled to India in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences “one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life”. He has stated that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.
What I don’t like about Mr Jobs is his relentless pursuit of profit although this is probably because I’m not an Apple shareholder.
I do like the fact that he took drugs, had a Muslim father and is Disney’s biggest shareholder.
One day Jobs and Co. will takeover the US school system. They will eliminate costly overheads such as teachers and school buildings and replace them will iphone apps. Students with iphones could then check their iphones for updates ever five minutes of every waking hour. OMG this has already happened.
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Porn Star Gymnastics not Banal Sex
Enough talk about hardware and software. Relationships, face to face, not Facebook friends or Twitter followers, are what I need to concentrate on this year.
So I will try to remember birthdays, anniversaries and Valentines day. I will try to make space for my partner rather than use my spare time for watching football, being out with the boys or surfing the net for dodgy content.
What is really bad is that porn is now mainstream. Today, I overheard a teenage Muslim girl in full burka dress, in McDonald’s, saying that when she gets married she is going to hot. She then went on the explain to her friends what she meant, “whips and things, fantasy and pvc” all the things that she has probably seen on some porn website.
This year for me is about love not internet porn, about being positive.
This year I will do everything right. This year is mine as the song says.
Lyrics of This is the Year
It’s so weird I was just about to leave here To say OK, they finally got me. I give in Oh I knew there must be something meant for me out there I just didn’t know where to begin
You smile and then you lead me into the dance floor I can feel that something’s starting Starting soon Been so tired, haven’t slept a night since 1994 Doesn’t matter now we’re on the move
‘Cause this is the year, this is The year it all will happen It’s finally here, I have been waiting all my life So put on your coat, it’s Time to go, it’s time For take-off I think I can say without a doubt This year is mine
We stumble in the stairs, We’re in a hurry now No time to see the last song With the band ‘cause the fireworks have started and the snowflakes shape my name don’t say a word now baby, take my hand
‘cause this is the year, this is the year it all will happen it’s finally here, I have been waiting all my life there’ll be no mistakes there’s just gonna be one big departure this year I will do everything right, this year is mine
yeah, I’m leaving tonight Don’t know how I know but I do know that This is the year, this is the year it all will happen It’s finally here, what I have been waiting for all of my life there’ll be no more mistakes, no more delays, just one big departure
Oh baby I don’t know how High I guess we’ll be Somewhere out of sight This year I will do everything right This year is
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