We heart KnitBerry…

Ever since I saw Whitney Port sporting a gorgeous cream woollen headband in an episode of The City a few months ago, I’ve been searching high and low for something similar – especially as “summer” is coming to an end!

KnitBerry cream headband - love it!

Et voila! Introducing KnitBerry. Knitting everything from scarves and children’s hats to headbands and cowls, founder Lana O’Neill tells me about her inspiration, the future and cracking Australia…

Hi Lana, can you tell me how KnitBerry started out?

KnitBerry was  created in October 2007 as a result of a high demand on children’s handmade knits. When my kids were born I used to make them lots of cute hats and sweaters, and people always used to ask me to make them the same outfit for their child or grandchild. I always enjoyed coming up with new designs for kids and women. When I was growing up we always had Burda Fashion Magazines around the house. Just the thought of making something yourself by hand was always fascinating to me.

Your pieces are really creative and individual – where do you get your inspiration from?

My inspirations come from just about anywhere – books, magazines, children’s toys, flowers, vintage clothing from 1920s, patterns on iron gates. I research colour and style for next year’s fashion on an ongoing basis which helps me to come up with fresh ideas. Seeing what designers come up with for the coming year makes me think about what sort of hat of scarf would go with that trend, and then I create it. Sometimes when I go shopping for yarn, just seeing an unusual colour or texture gets me inspired to create a particular item. I guess that’s where you would see particular pieces being so “individual”.

Have you got a favourite piece?

My favourite piece is a Bouquet of Roses cowl. I love how the variety of red roses plays against the black background.

Lana's favourite!

I am planning to come up with more black pieces such as that with colourful embroidered flowers.

Who are you knitting for?

I am knitting for busy women, working mums and for their children. One key piece needs to make a statement and my cowls can definitely do the job. The same can be said about kids hats – they will stand out in a crowd, they are fun and they are warm. I have so many more ideas for fun children’s hats, but sometimes my ideas are faster than my knitting!

Tell me about your headbands – they’re so gorgeous!

Ah, my headbands… They have been very popular. With the headbands, I was surprised to find out that people preferred classic colours to brighter ones. But sometimes you have to go with the demand. Headbands are mostly popular because a lot of people out there do not like hats. Headband is a great replacement. It can be used as both a fashion statement and a functional piece.

How successful has KnitBerry been? What are your plans for the future?

The KnitBerry Brand has been successful locally in US as well as in UK and Australia. It is also very pleasing to me that customers who bought from me before come back the next year and are very satisfied with my product. I am planning to delve into more “out of the box” marketing - good advertising is a big part of success in a small company. I would also love to work with some designers and create some pieces for the runway shows. Recently I have been accepted to participate in a pattern book for Cowls. It is very exciting to have my designs published.

Check out the full range of Lana’s products at www.knitberry.com or at her Etsy.com account.

Happy shopping!

Caked…

My friend and Cardiff cohort, Sofie Jenkinson, has put together this brilliant new online mag.

Caked is for those of us who like a bit of mud, falling about in rivers and frollicking in snow. From windsurfing and quad-biking to surfing and skiing, it’s all about having fun in the great outdoors!

I’ve just written a piece for her on a friend’s hen party where we donned the overalls for some quad-biking, jeep-driving and archery. Enjoy!

A bit of Banksy…

We went to the Banksy exhibition in Covent Garden last week. Vandal or genius? Amazing or overhyped? Not quite sure. The Mail once described him as ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel of modern art’… I like that.

Here are a few pictures for you to decide for yourself.

Practice, practice, practice…

I’m on work experience at Bauer’s Pregnancy and Birth mag for the next two weeks after a good time there over easter. Getting to write, research and do lots of bits and bobs – also crossing my fingers that another photoshoot day-out will come up as I loved that last time.

Anyway, so today I’m doing the tea-run in the kitchen – balancing a green tea with a PG Tips, trying to work out how the kettle works… you get the idea. As I was waiting for a slightly suspect looking kettle to boil, a man comes in and points out the hot water tap right in front of me. Doh.

“Only thing is, the cuppa is worse as the water is just below boiling,” he chuckles. “First day?”

“Work experience,” I explain.

“Ah, do you want to be a writer?”

“Yep, I’d love to so I’m just trying to write everything I can at the moment!”

“Practice is what it takes, just lots of practice,” he says.

“What do you do?” I ask.

“I’m not usually in this building,” he replies, “I head Kerrang, Q and Mojo.”

Cue a wide-eyed, shocked and somewhat tongue-tied me, as he wishes me good luck and goes off into the night (well, the corridor…)

Now ‘head’ is a rather vague word so I’m not sure exactly who he was (despite numerous google image searches to no avail).

But words of wisdom for me and my fellow recently-qualified journalists: Practice, practice, practice!

Being Julian Mitchell

Acclaimed writer for both stage and screen Julian Mitchell talks to Alexandra Davies about Morse, civil partnerships and near-success with Ray Davies…

“I haven’t liked the music in anything I’ve written. I don’t want the audience to be controlled by the music; I want them to be controlled by my words!”

Julian Mitchell grins as he says this. Although for the 74-year-old novelist turned playwright turned screenwriter, professional pride is no laughing matter.

As a writer on ITV’s Inspector Morse for ten years, professional differences with the author of the books Colin Dexter, meant Mitchell never wrote the final episode where 12 million viewers watched Morse die on the Oxford University grass.

“I wanted to do my version and Colin wanted to stick to the book,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “So somebody else wrote it in the end. It was a matter of pride.”

Although Morse is arguably his most well-known work, Mitchell’s career is an illustrious one, featuring ups, downs, and a whole host of intriguing anecdotes including one where he was approached by MI6 to become a spy.

Another favourite is the tale of the meeting where an unprepared, and still unforgiven, producer put an end to the teleplay Mitchell co-wrote with Ray Davies of The Kinks. ‘Arthur’ gave rise to one of the band’s most famous albums but wasn’t produced after the disastrous presentation.

It’s the excitable relation of such stories that reveals the youthful sparkle in Mitchell despite his age. Indeed, he laments his passage into the ‘Saga Syndrome’ – a stage where it’s hard to have your work published because you’re getting on a bit.

“I wouldn’t enjoy retirement,” he says, “I want to see the whole world before I die. It’s endlessly fascinating.”

With an attic full of unpublished work, Mitchell’s attitude that there’s no point in writing if nobody is reading it reflects his charmingly restless character. At the moment he is writing a new play about the mysterious Lord Lucan, a few novels (all set in his home county of Monmouthshire during the 60s, 70s and 80s) and has been approached about a stage adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier.

Beginning his career as an author, Mitchell produced an incredible six novels during the 1960s. “I wrote the six very quickly – the last of which was quite good. But at the end I didn’t know what I was doing and I lost confidence. I always wanted to be a playwright – it’s much freer and you can say what you think. I often used the character of Morse to voice my own thoughts.”

Turning to script-writing was a life-changing move for Mitchell. His play Another Country, about 1930s communism and public school attitudes towards homosexuality, won the Society of West End Theatre’s award for Play of the Year in 1982 and is credited for launching the careers of Rupert Everett, Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth. Mitchell fondly remembers Branagh being pulled in at the last minute for an audition.

“He was just out of drama school and came in wearing a velvet blazer which was horrible, all wrong, and I thought ‘He’s not going to be right for this’. But I looked past it and saw the talent.”

Mitchell describes his inspiration for Another Country as a desire to look at the personal motivations behind people converting to Communism in the 1930s. Indeed, the complexity of people and relationships is seemingly what intrigues him. Openly homosexual, he talks passionately about his 2007 BBC4 drama Consenting Adults, which celebrates the 1957 John Wolfenden report recommending the legalisation of homosexuality, and expresses his surprise at a society that has changed so radically since his day.

“I never thought there would be a time when civil partnership would be legal,” he says incredulously. “When my partner and I had our ceremony, we walked out together and no-one batted an eyelid.”

Although scathing of the idea that he could be known as a ‘gay writer’, Mitchell admits his sexuality may have been a catalyst in his being chosen to write the script for Wilde, a film about Oscar Wilde starring Stephen Fry as the controversial gay author.

“Although Stephen Fry is an extraordinary actor, I wasn’t happy with him in the end,” says Mitchell. “He brought a depressive melancholy to the role I don’t think Wilde had. But the film was largely good.”

This statement sums Mitchell up – he’s a captivating mixture of contradictions. Frank yet charming. A perfectionist willing to settle. A young man in the body of an old one who is now working in a society he both respects for its tolerance and disapproves of for its shortcomings.

“Traditional television drama is dead,” he says sadly. “Audiences of six or seven million watch the adaptation of an incredible script and then 20 million people watch Britain’s Got Talent. It showed no talent really.”

It’s hard to figure out this man. But delightful trying to.

The L-shaped safety net

At the end of 2008 the DSA announced an increase in the number of applications to become an instructor. In an economic crisis, Alexandra Davies asks whether driving tuition really is the recession-proof profession…

“I was driving along and we came to a fork in the road,” laughs Darren, 23, who has failed his driving test seven times. “I wasn’t really sure whether to go right or left, so instead of making a decision I hesitated and just went straight ahead up onto the pavement!”

The life of a driving instructor undoubtedly puts your nerves to the test. A foot constantly hovering over the second brake pedal. A perfected ‘count to ten’ calming technique. Dented hubcaps looking a little worse-for-wear. But there is evidently something appealing, as the number of applications to become instructors received by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) rose 16% between June and November in 2008 compared to the same six-month period in 2007.

In an economic recession where redundancies are coming thick and fast, people are heading for what they believe to be a safety net – a job that is rumoured to be reliable, for surely children will always turn 17 and people will always need to be able to drive. Training schools such as The Instructor College advertise the potential for great earnings as a driving tutor, and hammer home the growing demand for instructors. But belts are being tightened and disposable income for luxuries such as learning to drive is at risk – wanting to do it is one thing but being able to afford it is another.

So, at a point where the recession-immune perception clashes with the economic situation potential learners are finding themselves in, you have to wonder – is driving tuition really a safe profession?

For many the answer is no. Stephen Davies, 56, is a partner in Croydon-based driving firm, Gower, and has been an instructor for 15 years. He is certainly feeling the impact of the financial crisis. The number of new students taken on by him and his partner has dropped significantly from three a week each to one every few months and his business is down by more than a half, continually dropping since last year. A quiet period is routine during the school exam period when students are busy, but after it didn’t pick up over the summer he became worried.

“The image of driving instruction being safe from the recession comes from the idea that everyone wants and needs to learn to drive,” explains Stephen. “People go into it because they have been made redundant and want something they feel to be a secure employment in times of crisis.

Stephen Davies: "People may need to learn to drive, but we need paying!"

“But it’s certainly not recession-proof – I’ve had one pupil this evening who can’t afford lessons anymore as his Dad has just lost his job. There may be hundreds of people wanting to learn to drive, but we need paying for it!”

With most lessons averaging over £20 an hour, the price of learning as well as the cost of running a car means that for many youngsters taking the time to shed those L plates is simply too expensive. And for the parents paying for them, perhaps now driving lessons are becoming a luxury that cannot be afforded anymore.

Learning to adapt

But maybe what is needed is to roll with the punches. Learn Our Way driving school in Liverpool is about to introduce a new course where two students can be taught at the same time and split the cost of a lesson to make driving more affordable.

“As long as people need to go to work and get around, it will be necessary to drive,” says Paul Spencer, 45, who owns Learn Our Way.

“It can cost a lot, especially for students, but the quality of our lessons makes the difference. We have a top pass rate of 84% so get business through recommendations and word of mouth. I train all our instructors so they have the high standards that I have.

“I think in some ways driving tuition is a recession-proof job because there is work always coming in – my instructors are still working 36 hours a week,” he continues.

“But a lot of instructor training schools make it sound so easy, which it is but only when you have the correct training!”

And despite their different takes on the job at the moment, this is something on which Paul and Stephen both agree. Perhaps what is causing this increase in instructor applications is the sudden abundance of television and radio advertising for training schools. Smiling case studies with exciting promises of a sustainable job with a guaranteed place at a driving school. All for a fee of between £2,500 and £5,000 of course.

“You can get some really misleading adverts about what you can earn – turnover is one thing but profit is another,” Stephen points out.

“You have to be realistic about what you will earn and don’t take too much notice of promises. You will probably have to buy a car, get dual controls put it as well as have it insured – you could be looking at over £9,000 and you haven’t even got a pupil yet!

“If you work for a big company like BSM or the AA you will benefit from a higher profile – advertising, marketing, etc – but at the end of the day you are still a self-employed instructor.”

Indeed, when you qualify with the AA you are initially provided with pupils as well as a new car every six months. The group also offers national advertising and a tutor to advise you on the best way of running your business. But at the end of the day, how successful you are is up to you, and as more trainee instructors join such a large school to reap the advantages, self-reliance is vital.

Al Aitken, 30, is about to complete his driving instructor training with The Instructor College in Edinburgh. After working in hotels for several years, he decided to make the move to get his life back and revitalize his career.

“I was sick of my job as a banqueting manager in a hotel – the unsociable hours and working every weekend, Christmas and New Year. Driving instruction has everything I want in a job – I get to be my own boss and choose my hours for pretty much the same money as I was earning before,” he says enthusiastically.

And that is where Al hits the nail on the head. Amid debates about the recession and financial concerns, both Stephen and Paul profess that they would never do any other job.

The pride in a passed test or a learner managing a 3-point-turn without stalling; the human interaction and flexibility of the lifestyle; the new situations that occur on a day-to-day basis: these are pulls on their own before the idea of recession-proof even comes in to play.

No profession is immune to the economic situation without the need for some protective and proactive measures. Perhaps that is why Learn Our Way is not feeling the pinch as much as other driving schools. Regardless, the important thing is to maintain a clear head in the face of promotional adverts and do the research before making a significant career change, looking at the extra costs that are in the small print or come post-qualifying. But the perks of being a driving instructor are still there – both personal and professional – and the sense of satisfaction is undeniable.

Will good journalism be the first casualty of the digital revolution in the media?

‘He confidently predicted the imminent demise of print newspapers.
“Everyone will be reading their papers on flexible computers in five years’ time,” he declared, with another cavernous cackle.
“Rubbish,” I said.’

In his autobiography, The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade, ex-tabloid editor Piers Morgan recalls having this conversation in 2000 with the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. Apparently Mr Bezos had a crystal ball.

Digital is the way the media industry is inevitably heading. People are already reading their headlines on websites, getting information from tabloids and broadsheets at the same time through a simple search on Google. And instead of just reading an article, they are also watching videos, looking at pictures and listening to audio clips, not just as an addition to a story but as a main component. This digital revolution demands urgency and a higher turnover of work because of the speed in which information can be accessed and uploaded – news can be broken round the clock without issues of printing delay.

It is also allowing for the evolution and increase of User Generated Content (UGC) that grants the public a chance to contribute and create their own journalism. Anyone can write a blog, comment on an article or in a forum, write articles for websites, upload a video to Youtube in minutes or email an at-the-scene photograph to a major news company.

With speed, multimedia and competition from the audience being such main elements of these changes, what does this mean for good journalism and what can a journalist do to hold their own in the shake-up?

For many, this revolution has left the industry in crisis. Print sales are falling as cost cuts are made through large scale redundancies, with more to come as Press Gazette has announced this year possible job losses at the Financial Times and New Statesman. Journalists and print are being undercut and arguably undermined by a new generation of multimedia publications and UGC that is faster, with less restrictions and sometimes more knowledge. As the BBC’s Richard Sambrook said:

“Whatever subject we choose to report, someone in our audience – let alone the collective wisdom of the audience – will know more about it than we do.”

However, UGC does come with a new set of problems. ‘Unedited. Unfiltered.’ is the motto of CNN’s ireport through which anyone can publish a news story. In October 2008, a story appeared that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, had had a heart attack. Apple shares dropped, only to rise swiftly again when the story was revealed to be untrue. In his lecture, Journalistic Ethics in The Digital Age, BBC trustee Richard Tait iterates that accuracy, ethical standards and even legality become an issue when the speed and nature of user contribution leaves it unchecked and often untraceable.

Charles Reiss, former political editor of the Evening Standard, said in a Cardiff University lecture that public trust in journalists is even lower than in politicians with only 6% of people surveyed having faith in newspapers. Indeed, misrepresentations such as Cosmopolitan’s recent misquoting in a Scarlett Johansson interview about which the magazine admitted to using inaccurate news agency material, as well as a series of high profile events including the Andrew Gilligan Iraq dossier scandal, have left people sceptical about the media. At such a time, further doubts over journalism accuracy and ethics as a result of the industry’s changing format are the last thing we need. In this sense the digital revolution could not have come at a worse time.

But rumour and scepticism is one thing – is good journalism really at stake here? Nick Brett, Deputy Managing Director of BBC Magazines, doesn’t think so. According to him, some things will never change for a journalist and for creating good journalism – the need for great ideas, an understanding of the audience, good writing, a sense of timing and an obsession with accuracy. Regardless of the medium – computer screen or page – those facts are set in stone.

And journalists already have a head start. ‘One of the most important functions of a great journalism school is to set the tone and standard which encourages its graduates in the sure belief that they must carry with them a set of personal standards of reliability and honesty in their work.” Ian Hargreaves wrote this in The ethics of journalism: a summing up for Lord Hutton. It is a basic principal but one that is important. One of the best ways in which a journalist can continue to produce good journalism is to always remember the value of their training.

This training extends to everything from generating ideas and thinking of the audience to meticulous fact-checking, taking accurate notes and respecting source anonymity.

It also includes an awareness of personal limits. In August 2008 a female journalism student was brutally raped in an illegal migrant camp while investigating a story in Calais. Tragic as this is, she had gone alone and had not notified the appropriate people of her presence including a local charity working in the camp. Training is so vital, as is a knowledge of the scenario you are going into, and encouraging the audience to get close to the fire to take a photograph is taking a risk. Six working journalists around the world have already been killed in 2009 – it is an increasingly dangerous profession as journalists become targets in times of peace as well as war. Rodney Pinder, Director of News Safety Institute, is constantly trying to increase training for journalists in any situation where they may be at risk and to promote accountability on the part of employers. Journalists have the privileged access to these tools that can make them even more effective.

The future

The potential for good journalism is never going to be under threat: the principals are always there. It may be difficult with the increased pressure caused by job cuts and the urgency of the digital medium, but the thing that journalists need to do now is to adhere to the basics and show the invaluable benefits of their training – journalism is a profession after all.

In Killing the Messenger: Report of the Global Inquiry by the International News Safety Institute into the Protection of Journalists, Ethan Bronner of The New York Times, is quoted saying:

“Journalists have to make it clear they matter by raising the standard of their work.”

This is very true in a digital time where the audience is a rival and where the entire necessity of a “journalist” is in question. They are competing for a place in a world they have always been in and this is hard to accept. However, by proving their worth against that of UGC and new technological tools, by harnessing and using these new things instead of being threatened by them, journalists can hold their own in a time of change and start to bring trust back into the industry by doing the best job they can.

A new age of the digital is here and there is no stopping it – journalists should use this as a chance to up their game and make sure good journalism is the only survivor of the revolution.

Bee magazine launch…

“As long as people like to write, and as long as they like to read, magazines will never die.”

So said a speaker at the launch of new magazine Bee – the essential journal for Asian women – which hits the shelves today. Inspiring and optimistic words at a time when all we hear about is print dying and magazines closing. 

I attended the Bee launch event yesterday up at the House of Lords with my friend Sophie, who was representing women’s business network The Pink Shoe Club.

Bee aims to break from the mould of the typical women’s mag with their sole focus on beauty, fashion and glamour, by also fulfilling the social, political and intellectual needs of Asian women in Britain.

The brainchild of Managing Director Gulnaz Parveen, a freelance journalist and social activist, and Editor-in-Chief Anami Gour, Bee addresses and debates womens issues such as forced marriage and the idea of a patriarchal society, but is also keen to maintain a balance with lifestyle and arts features.

A range of guests attended the event including writers, researchers, business figures, inspirational and successful Asian women, and Bee woman of the month, BBC political correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti. I also met a product designer from the toy company behind Monopoly. She told me that despite it being a classic game, they are always working to develop new versions – there are over a thousand worldwide!

It was an interesting and enjoyable afternoon (with a beauty goody bag courtesy of Shahnaz Husain!) and, although the butterflies in my stomach were ongoing whenever I spoke to anyone remotely connected to journalism, it was a great experience of networking and seeing the blood, sweat, tears and passion that goes into a new title. One man told us, wryly but fondly, of his “emotional investment” in the mag after 3am panicked wake-up calls over one thing or another over the past year!

We were also told of possible plans to launch Bee in Dubai in the near future – wishing them the best of luck in a brave project.

The Mousetrap – a classic whodunnit

Courtesy of Andyrob

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is famed as the longest running show in the world. Indeed, with over 23,000 performances since the early fifties, it has had a pretty remarkable run. And after seeing it the other evening at St. Martin’s Theatre, I can see why.

Set in a post-war guesthouse in Berkshire, a classic whodunnit murder mystery unfolds and a mixed group of guests – both odd and normal, young and old, male and female - are all suspects with secrets to hide.  

The cast has chopped and changed over the years, with Lord Attenborough in the 1952 original cast and David Raven in the Guiness Book of Records for 4,575 performances as Major Metcalf. But despite cracking performances from the current cast, if not a tad overacted at times, perhaps the particular actors are not as important as the script and play itself.

Embracing a sense of British nostalgia and that warm fuzzy feeling you get from watching classic mystery TV such as Murder She Wrote and playing board games such as Cluedo (okay, so maybe that’s just me…) The Mousetrap at St. Martin’s (who have hosted the play for a whopping 34 years) has a simplicity of set and production that only serves to highlight the thrilling twists and turns of Christie’s plot.

A charming thriller.

P.s. an article in The Indy about the celebration of the 20,000th performance of the play in 2000.

Twitter – Moldova, Morar and status updates…

The Molodovan Parliament building - courtesy of Dittaeva

I didn’t really ever give Twitter much time or thought, despite our online lecturer’s pleas to give it a chance. But for the past week or so I’ve found that my vocab is becoming Twitter-filled and I’m checking it nearly as much as that obsessive once-a-minute Googlemail refresh when you’re waiting on an email.

Firstly, I started up a Twitter account for MBR magazine to help promote the website and link to mtb’ing enthusiasts – it’s progressing slowly but surely (we are now being followed by more than we follow which is always good…)

And then my Dad suddenly announced over dinner: “Oh yes, I’ve been on Twitter for months!” much to our surprise.

And finally the other day I read about the Natalia Morar situation in Moldova, dubbed as the Twitter Revolution. Morar, a 25-year-old journalist who was expelled from Russia for her controversial reporting on supposed illegal political funding in the country, organised a protest a few days ago which lead to 20,000 people demonstrating outside and storming the Moldovan Parliament buildings. They were calling for a recount of recent elections that saw communism return to power in the country. The result of this successfully instigated recount will be announced today.

And how did Morar organise this demonstration? By Twitter. Yes, Twitter. That harmless status update thingy that I had initially thought was a tad ineffective. Hmmm…

Status updates about your cat or the fact that you just made a cuppa may be a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things. But if you’re trying to search for an article subject, someone to get a quote from, a piece of information, or apparently even if you’re trying to organise a group of people to come together for what they believe in – whether it’s right or wrong and regardless of the results – Twitter has the potential to be very powerful. Morar and the Twitter revolution of Moldova has really driven this home.