Chapter One

When your at the impressionable age of 18, the possibility of falling in love, well properly falling in love; not lust which any teenager commonly mistakes for love, seems like an unfathomable motion. But there I was 18 and fresh from a break up that I thought was the love of my life. He was not my usual type…rugged, messy and not the good kind of rugged. An older man he was, 4 years or so and I really fell for him. A 9 month relationship at the age of 18, seemed like a lifetime, there I was genuinely believing he could have been the one. But young men like most, he soon got distracted and bored, with him resulting in fucking the barmaid at our local pub. To be honest it was a lucky escape, as it brought me to a whole new beginning in my life.

Love has always been a bit of a taboo subject with me. One could say I bore easily, changing my mobile every couple of months, going from a rock chick to a sophisticated Audrey Hepburn, moving my fringe around everyday urgently grasping for change. That was me, My range in men reflected my personality. After a couple of months I would tire, bored of looking at the same puppy dog face, reading the same soppy texts and going to the same bloody date venues, where remarkably I would bump into previous boyfriends. But even in-spite of all this I was a closet romantic, well deep deep down. I would cry at rom com’s and daydream about the perfect relationship, although I seemed to dispose every chance I got. But hey I was 18, it was a time for drinking, house parties, clubbing and being with my girlfriends. This is all I wanted, I was living the dream…

The day everything changed was a Saturday. It was a typical saturday. Slept till noon, woke up to a cup of tea and one of Marlboro Light’s finest, Eventually had breakfast around 3, then started getting ready for a night out on the town. I was going out with my friend Rachel. Although I hadn’t known Rachel for that long, we hit it off straight away. She was a typical girly girl, blonde, big boobs, probably every spotty 14 year olds masturbation dream. She had recently moved down South, as she is a Northerner and had, unfortunately, moved with her Northern boyfriend. I say unfortunately because at the time I hated it when my friends were in a serious relationship, it made them boring and they spent their time with me sporadically.  So there I was 6pm, lumbered with 2 bottles of cheap wine made in Slough, 20 cigarettes and about 50 outfits. Like any girl, we got smashed whilst getting ready, was much cheaper and it made our local nightclub seem like a top end bar in London.

So there we were, fake tanned, fake haired and plastered, trying to dance like the girls out of the MTV videos. Stumbling out the back for a Marlboro light, Rachel’s boyfriend had shown up, to my horror. Great, now their going to have an argument resulting in an early leave on Rachel’s behalf. But alas! He had brought a friend. Someone to keep me company while they ate each others faces. Another Northener! What are they all immigrating down south now? My initial thoughts – short, gorgeous and did I say… short. With me being 5’9 in flats, anyone who isn’t a basketball player is short to me. What made matters worse is that I decided to wear my killer heels, which made me the jolly green giant; well without being green and at this moment defiantly not jolly. We said our hello’s but with a fag hanging out of my mouth and WKD spilt down my dress, it wasn’t exactly the most romantic of meetings. I soon tottered off to find myself a tall man to prop me up whilst I tried to bump n grind to the R&B music. Rachel left, leaving me paying £30 to get back to the farmland, yes, I did practically live on a farm, my parents thought it would make a change from the city. Note to self, when I’m older never move my teenage children to the countryside, they will resent me heavily in later life.

Rise of Primark

To all women in a similar position to me I’m sure will agree what a godsend Primark has been for us all.

Primark firstly being, lets be honest, a bit of a jumble sale. Clothes flung everywhere, everything priced wrong, no order to the store and lets face it, the most unusual of sales assistants. It was a red face, looking down moment for us all, when seen walking out with our brown paper Primark bag. The lie’s we used to say when people asked where we got our fabulous dress. ‘Oh this dress, yea… I got this at that cute vintage store round the corner from Debenhams.’

Now Primark is a store where were proud to say we shop. Our beaming faces as we walk out with their brown paper bags, our arrogant look as we show off our new Saturday night-dress, the look of green embellishing our friends eyes when we reveal the price. The most desirable aspect of Primark for many, if not all of us, has to be the cost. As a regular shopper of Primark I must admit, being able to get an outfit for less than 20 quid is a dream.

Because of Primark’s rise of success, the clothes on hand to us are those of current style. Their clothes follow the latest fashion trends, along with the usual necessary basics every girl needs. From eye-catching shoes to comfy jim-jams, Primark has it all. With money being an issue for many of us in these current times, Primark offers us women everywhere the chance to splurge without the chance of changing that C to the dreaded D on our accounts.

With Primark being featured more and more in our fav fashion magazines, we women everywhere are beginning to realise that Primark has arrived and should be noted for being a reputable high street fashion brand.

 

The Ex

The Ex. Yes ladies the dreaded ex and I’m not even talking about your ex. Yes I am talking about his ex. Because lets face it, 99.9% of people have one. But his ex is much more of a concern than your own. Yes we have all done it; we’ve stalked their ex on Facebook and tried to make mutual friends with their friends just so you can find out the inevitable… Was he happier with her? Was she more fun then me? Did they have great sex? These are the questions we want the answers to, but are anxious to what the answer may be.

You want to be better than her; you must be, because he is with you now? But that is never enough to us; we still fixate on the Ex as a mirror, the ultimate comparison and the one we are always aspiring to beat. The ex has so much power, more than one is aware. Us ourselves are someone’s ex. Some other poor women is frantically assessing us in her head, trying to figure out if she can compare to us. That is the scary thing. I personally couldn’t imagine anyone being jealous of me, why would they, I am now a thing of the past, I don’t have contact with him, nor think about him in anyway. But still without realizing I am held up on some shrine, given this power that I didn’t work for, and defiantly don’t deserve. So why do we do the same.

Publicly we diminish the ex to nothing, slagging off every little thing about them, but secretly we are all slightly jealous of them, because at some point, she made our man happy. I wonder if our men obsess over our ex, the way we obsess over theirs. Do they compare looks, muscle weight, penis size? Does the thought of their partners having sex with another man before them sicken them slightly? My guess is no. My partner, doesn’t even batter an eyelid when I mention the ex’s name.

So why is it, that men are completely confident in themselves to not have to worry about the man their woman was with before them. And why can’t we be like this? From a society of strong, confident, independent women, we should be able to be confident enough to rise above the ex, realize that she is part of his past and remains to be, take back that power you gave to her…

But failing that, I suggest we pour ourselves a glass of wine and go through their photos on facebook, picking out every fault we frantically try to find, at least it gives us half an hour of satisfaction!

 

More Photography

Photography Continued

Canal Boat Photography

Lead Generation techniques

In business, lead generation is the process of finding new prospective customers and to generate new sales, this is vital to any company in order to gain long term success. Nowadays lead generation is a significant part of any business and by using effective lead generation strategies you can expand the growth and the standard of your business.

Firstly in order to generate leads, you must focus on your target market, research the market, and let them know that your company is there; show them what you have to offer. Common techniques include; telemarketing, printed advertisements, SEO, PPC and television advertisements.

One of the major factors for businesses when thinking of lead generation techniques is time. How long will each technique roughly take, before you start to see results? Many companies are pushed for time and need to see results and to have sales straight away. For example, a telemarketing campaign will take up much more time and more working hours, than a printed advert in a newspaper would do.  The techniques chosen are dependent on the length of time a business can dedicate itself.  Some techniques will have fast, instant results, but only for a short period of time; whereas other techniques will have a more, slow, steady, pace of results, but will last long term. A way for businesses to tackle this is that they often choose two techniques, combining the different measures of the chosen techniques. Businesses will gain most success by using a variety of techniques to reach various target audiences, thus generating a maximum amount of sales.

A primary consideration for many businesses is cost. It all depends how much money the company can afford to invest on lead generation techniques, For example many small business won’t be able to afford many of the techniques, I.e. television advertisements. If money isn’t a concern for some companies, they may want to choose to outsource their lead generation to a third party. As this will still gain their sales, but will have less added pressure on them, leaving them to focus on the core occupation of their business.