I never really imagined being self-employed, I definitely didn’t imagine owning and running multiple businesses: working primarily as a freelance writer and then having a side hustle.
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Most animal friendships rely upon survival and I’m sure many humans also regard their friends to be their saving grace. However, does this primal instinct of making friends become something we struggle with the older we get?
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What we don’t see behind the magician’s curtain is the huge, poorly built factories, where garment workers for Primark are forced to work eighty hour weeks for way below minimum wage. This may not be news to you and you may walk out of the high street shop with a big bag of “bargains” and have a slight edge of guilt, but has this changed our perception of the value and cost of a piece of clothing?
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Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome! It’s almost Christmas time, and despite the sense of overall dread and the stench of mass death hanging in the air, Britain is determined to put on its sparkly shoes and pretend it’s all fine. When is this dance being performed, might you ask? Well, between the 21st and 28th of December, of course!
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When someone passes away you don’t lose them, they are taken from you. They aren’t wandering around Tesco, or milling about a shopping centre, they are gone. Before this year I hadn’t ‘lost’ anyone for around ten years and the more recent years I have had a pit in my stomach knowing that my next loss would be substantial and potentially life altering. Safe to say I was right.
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The fact that Marcus, with the support of the majority of the public and many celebrities, had to campaign to install measures to ensure kids got meals, makes us question whether our government is meeting its expectations. Are the needs of the ordinary British people being neglected?
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What struck me more than the dress, the cheap baccy, the husky voices, was the attitude that ‘looking’ and ‘acting’ working class was a novelty, something to be picked up and dropped by comparison to their own backgrounds. Which by implication meant dressing like they had no money, drinking to oblivion, and generally treating the idea of being working class as simply an aesthetic.
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We don’t know whether COVID-19 is here to stay, nor do we know whether our current situation is the new norm forever or if it will change, so we have to readjust our ways of caring, communicating and showing our love for those that we would normally be with. There are lots of ways to help people to feel connected – we all just need to give it a little thought and consideration.
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Ageing is crossing a threshold into another land where life goes on but it is forever altered. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who said we have “nothing to fear but fear itself”. At 25 I worried over being a quarter of a century old, at 30 I cried over my frown lines and lack of success. I spent my late 30s in paroxysms of anxiety about turning 40. And don’t get me started on turning 50.
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How much warning do we need? We ALL have our own shit to deal with and it is just that, our own shit. Life can be entered into with too much caution sometimes, this I’ve learned to my cost over the years. Sometimes you need to boldly and blindly go into something, confront it and hopefully come out of it a little better. But exposure therapy isn’t for everyone and isn’t always helpful. Face your demons they say...but in your own time.
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Close the curtains, shut the door, make sure your phone isn’t connected to the family TV, and come with me to explore how porn’s treatment and depiction of age warps our cultural conception age in relation to sexualities, consent, and discrimination.
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If you want a royal-esque wedding? Do it. Literature themed? Why not. If you want to say ‘I do’ but you don’t want to have the wedding to represent a religion that isn't necessarily a part of your identity, you can do that much more with ease now we are in the 21st century.
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In my mid-20’s fatherhood inspired me to go back to learning, even if it was at home. I picked up more books, read way more essays and articles, and watched documentaries that weren’t about Ancient Aliens or Secret Societies. Most importantly, though, I worked on myself, and knew that a decent level of self-awareness would be my shield.
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For years the act of penetrative sex has been the dominate narrative of sexual discovery, but what, if like me, you can’t have sexual intercourse due to pain? You invest in a sex toy.
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The private housing sector is now a breeding ground for fraud and negligence; forcing unsuspecting students into poor, rundown accommodation. Over the course of the past decade, it has increasingly become more and more common for landlords and letting agents based in student areas to prey on the naivety of first-time renters; capitalising from those who have little-to-no experience dealing with finances or living independently.
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I’m the first to admit that having a Gen Z daughter makes me biased, but I have a lot of love for this demographic. And let’s remember, Gen Zers as brunch-eating yoga devotees is only one side of the story.
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This is the tale of how I tested the waters of the gender spectrum from agender to transgender, settling subsequently at cis female: gender nonconforming (or gender-variant). Confusing? It doesn’t have to be.
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Suppose a manager tells me to take care of myself and rest at home. In that case, that doesn’t make me want to take unnecessary time off, it makes me relax and recuperate faster because I’m not feeling embarrassed or uncomfortable.
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I always was the one known for doing about 563726468382 things at once alongside school. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t forced to do them, I’d adopt the hobby because I liked it, and luckily, my parents sang the tune with me.
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In September 2020, over 150 artists from around the world painted 50 plus large-scale walls across the capital; bringing art to the people in a legal way. The work of London Mural Festival was classified as construction and was therefore allowed under the pandemic rules.
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