Frog and I saw Death of a Salesman at the West Yorkshire Playhouse last Friday – last time I went to the theatre was to see Othello back in 2009 so it was a bit of a treat!

Reading up on the play, I’m pretty astonished to find out it’s been around for over 60 years – I knew it was old but to have been on stage for that long is quite an achievement. I can see why – one of the first scenes involves the eldest (and prodigal) son Biff, talking about how he’d rather be working on a ranch somewhere than wasting his life in a City job, always hoping for something better. He talks about being a cog in the machine, and not even knowing you are, and he makes it sound like a waste of a life. He says if you know yourself, and stay true to yourself, you’re happier…even if it means turning your back on what people ‘expect’ you to do.

It’s really evocative of the despair some people feel once they’re trapped in the system, and it still resonates even today.

The acting was probably the best I’ve seen at the theatre, with a strong central cast. There are some quite physical scenes, and a lot of the scenes segue seamlessly into each other taking us back and forwards in time. Three hours went by really quickly, whereas before I’ve found plays to drag on a bit.

I totally recommend seeing Death of a Salesman- it’s on at the Playhouse till the 29th May.

Karen Bruce, Labour activist in my contituency, has a website. I quote from her latest blog post entitled “What will the parties do for women?”:

“I was sorry to miss being at the LSE’s ‘what about women’ election debate I was meant to be at this week. I have just watched it on video and it was a great debate. You can watch the debate between Harriet Harman, Lynne Featherstone and Theresa May here. It’s a disgrace though that women (apart from the leaders’ wives) haven’t had the chance to be more prominent and at the forefront of the general election campaign as they should be. You may not get the chance to see women from the three parties debate in a high profile TV debate such as the leaders’ debates, but it’s well worth watching it via the LSE website.”

Sorry, what? “It’s a disgrace though that women (apart from the leaders’ wives) haven’t had the chance to be more prominent…”

Since when was it universally accepted that leader’s wives (or husbands, or whatever) should be prominent in politics? They’re not politicians! When leader’s wives get in front of the cameras, all that comes out of the media is who looks prettiest, or who’s the most fashionable. It would do us all a favour if they stayed in the background and didn’t detract from actual, political discussion. We need to be voting on policies, not who has the nicest family.

There’s more:

“Labour has taken action and through the new equalities legislation employers will be banned from having secrecy clauses. Employers will also be able to take positive action to allow them to diversify their workforce.”

Nooooo! Positive descrimination is bad! You can’t descriminate against men just to get more women into a workplace!

Argh! Karen Bruce looks to be a staunch supporter of Harriet Harperson…possibly the most terrifying, dangerous woman in politics today. Her closing sentence:

“Next Thursday I’ll be casting my vote to keep Harriet and her colleagues in a position where they can keep up the good work already done for women, there’s a lot more to do and only the Labour Party will do it!”

Good work? I would disagree.

Being ridiculously undecided on this, Election Day, I thought I’d Google my constituency to a) find out who all the candidates are and b) find out more about them. Check out the results:

Alec Shelbrooke, the Conservative candidate, is dominating the SERPS with a nice keyword domain and optimised title tag. The Liberal Democrats come in a few places down, again using a keyword domain to boost their rankings. The Labour candidate doesn’t even feature so I guess he’s out. Karen Bruce is an activist however and she eschews the tactics of rival parties, not bothering with a relevant domain and using keywords at the end of her title tag.

According to Google, Alec Shelbrooke is the most relevant candidate in my area!

So it’s election day tomorrow, I’ve got my polling card after registering just in time, and I have no idea who to vote for. It’s basically between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, but even watching the leadership debates didn’t help me decide.

I keep thinking, can I in all conscious make this man Chancellor?

What a surprise…I’ve just Googled George Osborne and he’s heir to a baronetcy. What is it with Conservative politicians being landed/titled or married to landed/titled folk? I’ve got nothing against them per se, but do they really understand what life is like for normal people?

Should I vote Lib Dem because they’ll give me £10k tax free? Maybe I should just flip a coin.

As some of you may know, Suggest of the Day is a site I came up with last year, basically to record all the weird and often offensive suggests that Google brings up when you start a search. Despite just being a bunch of pictures, it gets a few hundred natural visitors a day – mainly people searching on the bizarre “suggested” keyword, and mainly Americans. I made Suggest of the Day for my own amusement, and I’ve kept it up this long because it’s so low maintenance, but I’m starting to wonder…what should I actually *do* with it?

I could….

– Write an opinion about each suggest. To fit in with the spirit of the site this should be really sarcastic, possibly offensive but always tongue-in-cheek. This may help to generate discussion, but unfortunately, as the comment thread on this post shows, some people don’t really get what the site is all about.

– Have some sort of voting plugin to encourage more interaction. The vast majority of visitors don’t leave comments, but clicking a “I like this” button takes a lot less effort.

– Have more obvious social buttons. There are social buttons at the moment but I doubt anyone uses them. Maybe a huge “Stumble This!” would work better.

– Have a Facebook group. This would take quite a bit more upkeep – I mean, you have to get people to join, get them to add content, etc etc. I barely even use Facebook any more so this would be difficult for me.

– Utilise Twitter more. There is a Suggestoftheday Twitter account but it’s following….erm…me and Frog. I do use Twitter but to be honest, I’m at work all day so maintaining another Twitter account would again be difficult. Unless I just made an effort to check it every few days…

– Make money off it. There are some poorly-targeted ads on the site at the moment…(how do you target adverts to such a random site anyway?) Unless I went for something like Firebox affiliate ads which, assuming all my visitors are the kind of people who use Firebox, may work better. Because the site is so random and, well, *pointless*, it’s hard to justify the extra effort to build it up. If I had a plan for monetising it, the effort would be justifed.

Those are my thoughts so far! The ones that just need a plugin installing will probably get done, but like I said, Suggest of the Day needs a goal. I just need to work out what that is :s

As I sit here, waiting for a plumber to come and fix a water pump so unreliable British Gas “won’t touch it”, my mind turns to the year just gone and what exactly I did with the last 12 months. As it turns out, a fair bit was accomplished. This may go down as the year I finally did stuff that adults are supposed to do – the first year I actually felt like a grown-up, as opposed to someone pretending to be a grown-up.

In 2008, I did the four things that in my mind make you an adult:

1) Got a Job
2) Got a Car
3) Got a House
4) Got a Boyfriend

In 2009, I’ve done all sorts of things that were only possible because of these ‘Pillars of Adulthood’.

Upgrading Hercules and Experiencing Debt

My car (see Pillar of Adulthood Number Two), although full of charm and character (like a leaky and perhaps haunted 17th century cottage) was actually monstrous to drive. Foot to the floor, it reached a dizzying 40mph after a good half minute, and when it got to motorway speed – normally helped by a downward slope – the deafening rattle made me question its structural integrity and cross my fingers that the doors would stay on.

My job (Pillar of Adulthood Number One) was putting money in my pocket almost faster than I could spend it – an illusion I later realised was caused by Living at Home – so naturally changing Hercules for something a little more drivable was on my mind. I’d always hankered after a sports car and so, after a terrifying test drive in which I discovered Hercules was no preparation for driving a real car, I purchased a ridiculously expensive two-seater beast…on credit.

I couldn’t sleep that night.

It’s funny, the dramatic shift from having money free each month, to being so far in your overdraft you don’t even look at your bank statements any more. For the first few weeks I went from manic glee at driving something I never thought I’d own, to dark worry at the financial hole I’d dug myself, to hollow self-assurance I could pay it off in no time.

I stopped buying clothes. I stopped eating out. I joined LoveFilm because the cinema was too expensive. I started saying things like “oh look this is on offer” and “it’s cheaper to make it yourself”. I even stopped going to town because the shops were filled with things I couldn’t have – it was too depressing.

Now, after a year of frugality and debt, I’m just about in a position where I can look at my bank statements again. I don’t even want to buy loads of stuff any more. I’ve made my ridiculous purchase, I’ve spent a year with the consequences, and I have a far greater appreciation for money than ever before.

Going on a Proper Holiday and Needing It

My boyfriend (Pillar of Adulthood Number Four) took us to the Maldives this summer. I’d never been outside Europe before or to a fancy resort, so this felt like my first proper holiday. We were probably the youngest couple on the island, but we made friends with other couples there – people who a few years ago I’d have dismissed as ‘a different generation’. The difference between 23 and 33 feels a lot smaller than that between 20 and 30.

What’s more, I needed that holiday. This year I’ve discovered that work can be hard, holidays few, and that week in the Maldives was the most relaxing experience of my entire life. I never understood why people go to a faraway land to stay in a posh resort away from all cultural experiences – now I do.

Working, Still

My first job at a web company was sort of a fluke, but in 2009 I landed an upgrade and what feels kind of like a career. I’ve been working in the SEO field for over two years now – not long enough to know everything, but long enough to be responsible for things, and to know ’stuff’ that makes me (I hope) a useful employee.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been working so long that being a student is a dim and distant memory. Maybe it’s because even at weekends I wake up at 7am and can’t go back to sleep. Having a job is so ingrained in my life now, it’s starting to feel a bit like a career. This year I’ve realised that work is now a Fact of Life, and having a good job – that’s enjoyable, at a good company, with people you like – is very important.

Doing a Scary Thing

I’m scared of spiders. The kind of scared that makes me jump around and make incoherent noises until someone fetches a glass and takes the big bad spider away while I cower in another room.

I’m also scared of public speaking. The kind of scared that makes me feel a bit sick, makes me crazy with worry, and even now I’m not sure why I agreed to speak at a conference earlier in the year. It’s so far outside my comfort zone I was actually hoping to be struck down by swine flu, or a car, right up until the day of the event. The best way to describe how I felt is probably ‘abject terror’.

Even so, when the time came I got up on stage in front of a room full of people and talked about some stuff. All by myself. And I survived. Afterwards, I felt like I’d been thrown into the sea and managed to swim to an island – I wasn’t happy or elated, I was just relieved it was over and sort of disbelieving that anyone had enjoyed my floundering.

The thing is, I know now that I can do it, and I know what I did good and what I did badly. Public speaking was one of my deepest darkest fears, but next time (next time!) I’ll do it better.

Moving Somewhere I Like

In 2008 I moved in with my boyfriend to a house (Pillar of Adulthood Number Three) in Harrogate – a house and an area I never liked. It should have been so nice and yet, it wasn’t. It never felt like home, and after saying this for a good few months we took notice of the fact we were only renting and could leave whenever we liked. In 2009 we moved to a flat in Boston Spa and it actually feels like home. Just like the whole career thing above, I don’t know why it feels that way – it just does. It’s smaller than the house, not as fancy inside, but it’s cosy and warm and I like it here.

What about 2010?

I don’t know what next year will bring. I have some nebulous plans about travel, and some more concrete plans about Projects, but whatever happens I feel pretty well equipped to deal with it. I know there are things I still can’t do, circumstances I’m as childish as ever…but in a lot of ways, I’m all grown up.

(Many thanks to sk8geek for the Think Vis photo)

My new rural home of Boston Spa is very different from Harrogate. There, I parked on the street and struggled each morning with the 3-inch gap my next door neighbour left me to get out of the space. Here, I have my own parking space in a leafy car park. In Harrogate, thieves stole my bike. In Boston Spa, an elderly man from upstairs sorts my post every day and leaves it outside my front door. There, neighbourhood cats fought and did poos in the back garden. Here, there is an owl who sojourns in the woods nearby.

His name is Mr. Hoot.

Every evening, when it gets dark, Mr. Hoot sits in a tree and tells the world about his day. Or maybe he’s trying to find other owls to play with. I’ve made it my quest to find Mr. Hoot – he may look like this:

Since he’s a Boston Spa owl, he is probably splendidly attired:

Next time Mr Hoot can be heard in the woods, I shall go outside with my camera, take some smoked ham, and try to make his acquaintance.

I came across a really interesting essay on how humanity is getting more peaceful – bloodsports are (largely) no longer seen as entertainment, and the value placed on human life is greater than ever before. The essay explores why our sensibilities may have changed over the centuries, leading to us living in probably the most peaceful time in history.

Here’s the PDF:

Download me!

Hooray! After three years of waiting I finally got to the Shakespeare Festival again at Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds. Frog and I went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I can happily report it was fantastic. It’s funny, I was looking forward to it for ages, but as soon as the play started I was a little worried I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as last time. Last time I saw it, Wayne Sleep played Puck, Pearce Brosnan’s son was either Demetrius or Lysander and Mina Anwar was Titania. I know you shouldn’t judge a play by the level of fame of the actors, but it was certainly novel seeing people off the telly (and Wayne Sleep was awesome). Seeing different actors walk out, I immediately started to compare them to last time and then worried that they wouldn’t be as good!

I shouldn’t have worried…Puck (Steven Blakeley) lived up to Wayne Sleep and I was particularly impressed by that as that was the hardest act to follow. Helena (Martha Swann) was a brilliant comic part, Oberon (David Davis) had a really good stage presence and the four tradesman (Mark Arden, Robert Crumpton the lion, John Ioannou, David Vale) got lots of laughs. I recognised several of the actors from last time and it was nice to see them again. I wish I’d gone to see Much Ado about Nothing afterwards to see them playing different roles. I get the impression from the gallery (here) that they play really different parts.

Many thanks to Chris from the British Shakespeare Company for letting me know about the photo gallery. And apologies for the hastily-written post – if I don’t write this now I never will

I’ve never really written loads on here, mainly because in this industry everyone blogs and it’s hard to say something that hasn’t been said before. The other reason is that this blog isn’t a part of my job and I don’t use it to run a company or anything, so I wouldn’t actually get a lot back out of writing about SEO all the time. It means I get to post about cats whenever I feel like it, but also that there’s often a week or two between posts.

Recently I’ve also started Suggest of the Day, and although that doesn’t take up a lot of time, it is a bit of an outlet for posting whatever content I want (within the constraints of the blog).

The main thing I wanted to post about however is the Bethemiddleman.com blog which I’ve got off the ground this week. For anyone who’s managed to avoid Frog and I for the last six months, Bethemiddleman.com is a new property portal for private house sales, along with rentals and room shares. The site is going into beta in a few weeks and as launch edges closer we wanted to start getting content onto the site. You can check out the blog to see my new foray into property writing (and if anyone can recommend other property blogs I should be reading, I’d be most grateful ). I’m quite enjoying the change but it probably means I’ll have less energy to post on here.

I guess I started this blog with good intentions and whilst I take my job pretty seriously, it hasn’t quite lent itself to being written about the way I expected. Especially when I can’t really write about clients (and that’s the most interesting part!). So, I’ll continue to post on here whatever unrelated stuff takes my fancy, but for proper blogging on a theme you know where to find me