If You Can't Relate to a Taylor Swift Song, You're Dead Inside.

A couple of years ago, I shared a theory to help boys and girls of all ages make good life choices - simply ask yourself 'What would Katy Perry do'? Usually the answer was to go out dancing, take shots and throw on some fancy dress - this, according to Katy, is how we do. And I stand by it.

But since then, a few things have changed. Most importantly, I've discovered Taylor Swift (Katy's arch-enemy, if gossip magazines are to be believed). And what would Taylor do, I hear you cry?

Well, depending on the situation, she'd probably write a killer song about it, make a self-deprecating joke, call her best friend and basically just SHAKE IT OFF.

Unlike the cartoonishly sexy persona of Katy, Taylor seems like a girl who would fit right in watching the Great British Bake Off, who would send you links to funny cat videos on YouTube and help you analyse a text from a guy you're dating.

An antidote to the mythical hipster 'Cool Girl' (a term coined in Gone Girl, referring to that Hollywood mirage of the quirky chick who never gets angry), Taylor is all real, a girl with a lot of feelings who is not afraid to share them. "It's in style to be edgy and blase and unaffected but I'm none of those things," she's admitted, making it OK for the rest of us too.

Taylor is so uncool she's cool. She dances endearingly awkwardly at Awards shows with her girlfriends, while bored celebrities stay in their seats.

She fully embraces her cat-lady reputation, and isn't one to peddle low self-esteem to her fanbase, regularly commenting on her fans' Instagram pages to tell them they're gorgeous.

She she even shared a chatty recipe for chai sugar cookies in inimitable Taylor style, finishing on one of her best lyrical moments yet: 'Cos the bakers gonna bake bake bake bake bake.'

Instagram @taylorswift

But more importantly than all of this? She is responsible for 'Red', a sprawling epic of an album. Taylor had never been on my radar until the bitter anthem 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together'. Before then, like most Brits I'd just had a vague awareness of her as a Nashville teen star frolicking in a princess dress in the 'Love Story' video.

But like most others, I had vastly underestimated the power of Swift. Red is now up there with my most addictive albums of all time - combining the grandiose storytelling of her country roots with experimental pop hooks and even a couple of dubstep drops, not to mention lyrics that are quite obviously straight from the heart.

I imagine that, for Taylor, listening back to her old albums must feel like re-reading her teenage diary, slightly embarrassing and sometimes a little overdramatic ("You stare at the phone, he still hasn't called, and you feel so low you can't feel nothing at all"), but nevertheless a totally honest, unguarded and emotionally raw picture of how she was feeling at the time. And isn't that exactly what a love song should be?

But Taylor's no lovesick fool. She has become knowingly jaded and self-aware in her songs, rolling her eyes at the guy who finds his peace of mind with his indie records which are "much cooler than mine",  at the "long list of ex lovers who'll tell you I'm insane", and at those who cruelly say "I go on too many dates, that I can't make them stay."

And this romantic body-count only consists of about four or five men in a decade-long career. One of whom - John Mayer - has incidentally dated and sung about more A-list women than I've had hot dinners, and yet escaped the vitriol that Taylor receives for doing the same.

To me, the lazy media criticism of Taylor's dating life and songwriting smacks slightly of single-bashing and slut-shaming. Why can't we celebrate that a 24 year old girl has written five albums' worth of songs based on authentic experiences?

But, aware of the criticism she gets every time she writes a love song, Taylor remains unapologetic and hasn't let the haters stop her doing her job. She's continued to write relentlessly catchy songs which will have her competitors quivering in their heels and desperately wheeling out the usual dial-a-hit DJs.  The latest of her offerings is 'Out of the Woods' which is currently killing it in the US charts, and sounds like nothing anyone else is releasing right now.

As a life-long defender of (good) pop music, I've said it before and I'll say it again - there's brilliant pop, there's terrible pop, there's brilliantly terrible pop, and there's terribly brilliant pop. And then there's Taylor Swift, sitting comfortably in a league of her own.

Us Swifties have known this for a while, of course. But something changed this week. With the release of her new album '1989' and the rave reviews from NME, Rolling Stone and the Guardian, the rest of the world finally seems to have cottoned on too.  Grown men are unwittingly humming 'Shake it Off' to themselves at work, and it's finally becoming acceptable to say out loud: "Taylor speaks to me". Vindication at last!

Why now? It may be partially because Taylor has gradually evolved her sound into supercatchy synth-pop, with influences from the Human League, the Drive soundtrack and Charli XCX, without compromising what makes her unique. The sound on 1989 may be fresh, but it's unpretentious and lyrically is still totally Taylor.

And that is the secret of her success - far from only catering to the realms of dumped  teens, much as we'd all hate to admit it, Taylor's themes of love, escapism and disillusionment are universal.

So why do some people still hate on her? Probably because she's young, fun, a bit uncool and she writes uncomfortably honest, hyper catchy pop songs about boys. And why do I love her? Because she's young, fun, a bit uncool and she writes uncomfortably honest, hyper catchy pop songs about boys.

Instagram @taylorswift

And if - after reading this far into the mad ramblings of a fangirl - you're still a doubter, if not a full-on hater, I will leave you with this. Remember when Kanye stormed the MTV Awards stage during her acceptance speech for Best Female Video? Well, apparently she now has a photo of the incident framed on the wall of her home. Beneath it she has written: “Life is full of little interruptions”. That's right, she responded to the most humiliating moment in her teenage life by calling super-ego Kanye a "little interruption."

Never change Taylor, never ever change. Like ever.

Sometimes we all need to escape

Over the last six months, I have blogged about how to escape. From secret speakeasies to immersive cinema, London is an escapist's playground. But what I haven't mentioned until now is why to escape.

When asked what my blog is about and I reply with 'escapism', I usually get one of two reactions; either someone instantly gets it, their eyes light up and they say 'Ooh you should write about ….'. (Please keep this coming!).

Or they look at me like a sympathetic therapist and say, 'But what are you escaping from?'

Humans have always felt the need to escape, and over the centuries this has taken many forms; Roman gladiator fights, Shakespearean romps at the Globe, hippy communes and happy hours.

True, escapism can have darker connotations; drug addicts, spendaholics and fantasists are prime examples of escapism gone a bit wrong. And our current rose-tinted nostalgia for bygone eras and the 'good old days' does beg the question, 'What's wrong with the here and now?'

But I also wonder what's so virtuous about gritty realism? If we lived only in reality, and expanded our minds no further than our immediate surroundings and daily routines, how would anyone ever conjure up the imagination to write music, to dream up Narnia and Hogwarts, to build a spaceship or even to challenge their current situations and dream of a better way of doing things? Life would be very dull indeed.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Walt Disney Pictures, 2005)

The importance of escapism should never be underestimated. Having worked in the hospice sector for nearly four years, I've seen first hand how seemingly small pleasures like learning to paint, going to the seaside or enjoying a favourite childhood meal can make the biggest difference to someone in the most difficult circumstances of all.

My own interest in escapism admittedly started as a result of a broken heart, when my friends rallied round, making sure I was never alone and filling my calendar with fun and diverting activities. And although now, thankfully, everything seems to be ticking along quite nicely, I'm still nurturing my escapist state of mind.

This doesn't have to mean you are dissatisfied with your own life; I think it's about living in the here and now whilst opening your eyes to the everyday moments of magic that are all around us. It's about embracing everything that's not sensible, realistic, rational or mundane, and not getting bogged down by the necessities.

In short, escapism keeps you sane. The trick is to enjoy 'bite-sized' pieces of harmless escapism, just enough to take the edge off real life without retreating to another world altogether.

Having had a very real, very sad last few weeks as our beautiful Granny slipped away from us, perhaps unsurprisingly I've struggled to get into that mentality where I want to write about fun little diversions.

But then I remember that Granny herself was somehow both hilariously pragmatic and a born escapist; she travelled, she laughed, she read, she bet on horses, she drank before lunchtime and she fell in love (usually with “big men with little brains”, in the words of my great aunt).

So in memory of Granny, I have chosen a few quotes to help me – and anyone else who might need an emergency dose of escapism – to recapture the magic in everyday life.

Night Sky by Babak Tafreshi, from telegraph.co.uk

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” - Oscar Wilde

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan 

“What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets.”

― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

“If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” - JRR Tolkien

"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." - Luciano Pavarotti

"Some movies are slices of life, mine are slices of cake." - Alfred Hitchcock

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
― Roald Dahl

“Ah, music! A magic far beyond all we do here!” - Albus Dumbledore

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” - Oscar Wilde

And finally, for those worrying about the escapist's hangover, whoever said that coming back down to earth couldn't be part of the fun...?

Felix Baumgartner's leap from space, from telegraph.co.uk

Today I am ... at war with winter

Back in February, snow blizzards did their best to thwart our summer-themed house party. But the big freeze didn't put a dampener on proceedings, oh no. Like true Brits, our nearest and dearest gallantly put on their shorts, sunglasses and beach wear and braved the elements for the promise of fun in the sun.

The lilting beats of Will Smith and Shaggy floated invitingly out into the frosty street, and once inside, our shivering guests were transported to a beach paradise. We covered our whole house in seaside wallpaper (two months later, we have absolutely no intentions of removing it), inflatable palm trees and flamingos, and for our piece de resistance, concocted a lethal vat of tropical rum punch.

Anyway it seems the Macarena may have had some kind of pagan sun-dance effect, as just a couple of weeks after the party, the whole of London was bathed in an early spring. Cherry blossom, daffodils and blue skies ahoy.*

By March, every patch of grass was crammed with city slickers and students catching the lunchtime rays and the tantalising smell of barbeques drifted over garden fences across London. As for me, I wiled away the sunny weekends in Kew Gardens, South Bank and St James Park, watched 6 Nations rugby matches on big screens in The Castle's beer garden and had my first Pimms of the season.

Kew Gardens, March 2012

And now, winter, my old foe, it seems we meet again. Unbelievable pictures of snow-blanketed Edinburgh, Newcastle and Sheffield are being posted threateningly by our friends in the north as the cold weather advances.  Surely it's only a matter of time before the frosty invasion reaches London.

Only this time, you will be prepared. Arm yourself and your loved ones with the below - and together, we can send the big freeze packing...

The drink: Tropical rum punch (serves a crowd!)

3 bottles of white rum (you heard me)
1 bottle of Malibu
2 cartons mango juice
4 cartons tropical juice
1 bottle of cloudy lemonade
A load of chopped fruit (we used strawberries, mangos, apples, lemons and limes)
Ice
Put the chopped fruit in the biggest saucepan or tub you have. Pour in the rum so the fruit soaks up some of the alcohol. Leave for 5-10 minutes and then add the rest!

Serve with cocktail umbrellas, naturally.

The tunes:

Now, my original playlist for the party is over 7 hours long (it's fair to say I got a bit carried away - my pop knowledge is a Pandora's box to be opened at your peril).

But if you don't have the stamina for the full party-thon, here are a few personal highlights that should keep the winter blues at bay...

 

 

 

*There's a small chance this phenomenon could also have been due to the 'seasons' - but I really think it was the Macarena.