What Poppy did.

justmigrate: Hi, I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:27:06 +0100

Hi,

I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go though my blog for all the new posts.

Its easy to migrate try JustMigrate

3Crumbs app - Are you the local thrifter we all have been looking for?

justmigrate: Hi, I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:23:42 +0100

justmigrate:

Hi,

I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go though my blog for all the new posts.

Its easy to migrate try JustMigrate

3Crumbs app - Are you the local thrifter we all have been looking for?

justmigrate: Hi, I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:23:30 +0100

justmigrate:

Hi,

I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go though my blog for all the new posts.

Its easy to migrate try JustMigrate

3Crumbs app - Are you the local thrifter we all have been looking for?

justmigrate: Hi, I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:18:52 +0100

justmigrate:

Hi,

I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go though my blog for all the new posts.

Its easy to migrate try JustMigrate

3Crumbs app - Are you the local thrifter we all have been looking for?

Before and after.

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:53:00 +0100

This week I received two sets of photos which really show how much my silly face has been through recently.

I don’t have any of my hospital images or x-rays unfortunately, I might try and ask for some next time I’m in. (Although I’m only in a bra in most of them and the idea of my debut into online porn involving medical shots in a cold hospital room isn’t an idea I particularly want to entertain.)

I still don’t want to talk about it all really, a la my joyous previous post, but these photos are amazing. To me at least.

My jaw is fully closed in both sets of pictures. Eating was fun back then!

Ignore my weird face, you can’t exactly ‘pose’ for these pictures.

Here’s to chewing.

This is the end. (Of my robot face)

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:18:00 +0000

I haven’t updated this blog since my surgery was postponed - and I won’t be updating it again after this.

I have been overwhelmed by lovely texts, emails, cards, tweets, DMs and Facebook messages and I have read and appreciated every single one of them. I have been god awful at replying to them but I am not in the right head space. Please, please know they were/are appreciated though. Really! Thank you.

The ‘experience’ of the last few years, and more profoundly the last few months, has changed me in ways I always hoped it wouldn’t. I am not the same person. And I am not a better person.

I am reminded a lot by those around me that when you are going through hell, you should keep going. I am trying to with the help of various people.

I will no longer be sharing any of the details of my ‘progress’, with hindsight I have no idea why I ever wanted to blog about any of this in the first place, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Maybe when this all seems like a distant memory (hah!) I will write about the final chapters of it. I don’t get the impression this book has final chapters, but we shall see.

I want to be a good daughter, sister, partner, friend and entrepreneur. I can be.

To bizarrely (mis)quote Liam Neeson in Taken, if I could talk to the ailments plaguing me at the moment then this is what I would say…

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long time. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let me go, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

I want to win. I always want to win. Winning - in the original non-Charlie Sheen sense of the word - is my drive.

It’s not easy to fight day in and day out, but I hope to try to.

AND THEN ONE DAY WE CAN ALL LAUGH ABOUT IT. Yeah.

I am deeply sceptical of ‘wellness’ at the moment, I don’t trust it. But a big thank you to those who seem more optimistic and are part of the recovery process. You rock. You really do!

No more robot talk from me, except MAYBE face to face if you seem particularly patient and have carbs with you.

xxx

I have the same face. Oh.

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:04:00 +0000

This is an emo yet fashiony picture to describe my current general feeling of hopelessness and sorrow. Except I don’t have shoes this nice and Hailee is *way* hotter (and still 15 so don’t event THINK it).

I haven’t got around to blogging about the fact my surgery was cancelled this week because there isn’t much to say. I do feel rage/sadness/hate/misery/other horrid emotions/pity, but my overwhelming state is ‘nothingness’.

I’ll summarise the conversations I’ve had this week though.

WTF? You look fat but you definitely don’t have a broken jaw. What happened?

Well, I got fat because I ate a fucktonne of food expecting to be wired shut for six weeks on Tuesday. So yeah, I have put on about 3000 stone, LEAVE ME ALONE. My jaw isn’t broken because they chose to break my heart/general being instead.

Tell me more, tell me more… (like does he have a car?)

The weekend before the op I was generally depressed and scared and lonely. I didn’t sleep at all. I didn’t cry (only because I’m too empty for that now, not because of a surplus of braveness). I watched some football and tried out my new chair which I’ll be recovering/sleeping in. I had to stay indoors as there was a risk of catching a cold and I was already a bit sniffly. Heaven forbid I’d have gotten sick and I dunno, HAD MY OPERATION CANCELLED. I drank a lot of Berocca and it was definitely the most boring weekend of my life.

Get to the point, love.

Yeah so on Monday I went into hospital as planned to have my wafers fitted. These are splints you wear between your broken face as it heals. Having them fitted was very painful, because they are designed for your new jaw and thus awkward to get in. My jaw nearly snapped right there in her hand. I nearly punched her. (Reflex, not rage - promise Mommy!). I sulked. The 2 minute appointment was dragging on and on and it became clear something was ‘amiss’ as more and more men arrived to stick things in my mouth. (Ahem).

There was concern about my face bow.

Mmmm face bow

So I had it measured again.

OUCH OUCH OUCH.

Then the lab technicians ran away with their big box called Dinsey and all my lovely replica jaws. I was told I had to come back to the hospital first thing in the morning and that I’d be last on the surgery list, giving them time to work on my models and get everything just right before the gory bone cutting began.

Then what happened?

Then I got a phone call, whilst still in the hospital, explaining my surgery had been cancelled.

Say whaaaaaaa?

Yeah. I was told that because there had been a mistake with my measurements on the 20th of December, they needed more time to model the surgery in the lab before they could hack up my face. The best part was that they realised their mistake last week but didn’t call me in to be re-assessed, even though that would have meant there’d have been enough lab time for the surgery to go ahead. Cool, huh?

THOSE BLOODY BASTARDS

I know. I am always proved right eventually.

Did they say sorry?

Yes, and they promised to re-book me within the month.

So when’s your new op?

I HAVE NO IDEA. I was promised within a month but admissions say it’s impossible before mid March. I am going back into hospital on Monday and hope to find out some more info then.

What does this mean for work?

It means I have lost all my January/Feb contracts for nothing. It also means that I can’t plan any new work at all as I have no idea when my surgery will in fact take place. If my surgery is in March I will have lost 5 months of work in total. I don’t even know if I can cover London Fashion Week. I can’t accept a single working engagement and all of the business I have already turned down for January/February can’t be resurrected. I can’t get any government support as I’m self-employed and under 25. I couldn’t get insurance that would have protected me against something like this (I tried) as this was a pre-existing condition. Essentially I am currently regretting starting WIWT at all this side of surgery, even though what I’ve achieved is pretty cool…despite spending every day feeling like I’ve been smacked about with a baseball bat. I am gutted. And poor. Very poor. (Woo!)

What does this mean for your family?

They all booked time off work for no reason, they’re stressed out, they’re very sad. Etc etc.

How much pain are you in?

A lot more than the usual ‘a lot’, this is due to Monday’s appointment and general pulling about. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in bed and did a lot of vomiting.

Would you like to go on a killing spree?

Yes please!

——Fin——

A much needed update...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:03:04 +0000

I started this blog in 2010 because I thought I’d like somewhere to write about all my maxfax “woes”. But unless you’re one of those types that likes to live out car crash relationships through Facebook status updates, the whole ‘LET ME SHARE HOW SHIT MY LIFE IS’ urge doesn’t really strike as a natural feeling.

When I’ve been in pain and depressed, my natural instinct hasn’t been to blog about it. Few people have borne witness to the true horror of the last few years (I’m not exaggerating, it’s been an absolute ballache), but I’ve wanted those private things to be private. I had a startup to launch and family and friends to stick around for, so I had to ‘get on with it’ as best I could…even though there have been terrifyingly dark days where my patience had seemingly run out.

When I last wrote (July 2011), I had just started seeing the pain management team at RSCH. The pain clinic is a fabulous service run by their top anaesthetists. I’m not sure if all hospitals have such clinics yet, but they’re getting that way after the CMO’s Annual Report highlighted the need for major investment across the NHS in chronic pain ‘support’ as…to quote the report… “chronic pain reduces quality of life more than almost any other condition”. (It really bloody does).

I was really hopeful that my nerve block injections (which I wrote about here) would provide significant relief, but unfortunately things got progressively worse. One in particular on the left side of my skull had a spectacularly bitch-fitty reaction. Any initial relief subsided within weeks and as the sensation came back, things deteriorated to worse than they’d ever been really. And whilst I don’t think the injections specifically made things worse, they certainly didn’t stop things from getting worse. By August I had some pretty bad episodes which affected everything from talking to walking. Yeah. That was terrifying. Squeezing in press appointments and business meetings around MRI scans and emergency hospital visits wasn’t exactly easy. Somehow the social network version of WIWT got launched in time for London Fashion Week, but my residing memory of the summer was of hospitals. (And of lying in the back of my Dad’s car like a pathetic overgrown baby - literally relying on your parents for everything isn’t nice, but my parents and sister are luckily the awesomest. Especially Heather actually, she’s an AMAZING carer).

I had an emergency appointment with my pain consultant and effectively said I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) be seeing my 25th birthday if something didn’t change soon. I had no interest whatsoever in that being ‘the rest of my life’, I wasn’t being defeatist…just realistic. I was put on neuropathic painkillers to take at night alongside my usual day to day dihydrocodeine cocktail. I took them for the first time on a Friday. I didn’t get up again til the following Monday night. It *may* have been the best weekend of my life. I quickly realised I couldn’t get out of bed (let alone run a blaaaddy business) if I stayed on that dosage though (as blissfully blissed out as I was) so I tinkered about til I found a dose that allowed me to sleep AND get up the next day. I was very confused for the first month or so on them. I am now terrified of being elderly having experienced genuine ‘confusion’. I used to get off the train in random places and wave at strangers and cry in public places because I suddenly wouldn’t know where I was or why I was there. It was funny when it wasn’t scary. My conversation skills were RAD.

I started weekly physiotherapy and acupuncture with the pain management team to help my cervical spine…and it did help a lot. Unfortunately NOTHING would really help my jaw, being that it’s structurally f*cked, so on Tuesday I am having my upper and lower jaw broken, shifted, rotated, metal plated, screwed and *hopefully* made a bit happier.

It’s not at all certain that this will rid me of pain, but my muscles SHOULD theoretically learn to behave (with therapy) once I have a ‘structurally perfect’ jaw. My jaw is being moved/set differently on either side as I have facial scoliosis, but my open bite and vertical maxillary excess should be fixed by what they’re doing to my upper jaw. And by having my ‘maxillary cant’ corrected (‘maxillary cant’ can be called something ruder when it’s partiuclarly painful, I’ll let you work that one out for yourselves), I should have less problems with my vision as my stupid bastard eye muscles can chill out. I might be able to do spiral staircases again! Woooo!

I have been told repeatedly not to get excited that this will cure the pain (trust me, I really don’t need to be told “to not get excited”) and that secondary maxfax surgery may be necessary, but this op is the only available next step as until the skeletal structural corrections have been made, everything else is a bit pointless now.

I am very lucky that I don’t look like I have anything wrong with me, I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up with an overbite or underbite, but I do seriously envy those that can look forward to jaw surgery as they’re hoping to get their dream face at the end of it. I’ve literally been told from the beginning “you have a very pretty face, it’s a shame we will have to break it”, none of the team want to “wreck my face”. And I certainly don’t effing want them to. I am BLOODY TERRIFIED of what I am going to look like. I’m as insecure as the next girl (have you seen my hideous thighs? or the bad skin on my upper arms? or my fat ankles?) but my face? My face is nice. I STARTED A BUSINESS BY POSTING PICTURES OF IT ON THE INTERNET. I am clearly VERY vain. So yeah, I am mortified that I need this done.

I’ve seen the x-rays, I know how asymmetrical things are, I know my whole spine is being thrown out of alignment, I know I can’t talk or eat or sleep without a shed load of painkillers every day, I know my liver is tired of the medication I am forced to take…but I can’t get excited about Tuesday, I really can’t. I am devastated and frightened even though I’ve had years of treatment building up to this inevitable day.

I can deal with the idea of my jaw being broken up into pieces (just), I can deal with the fact I’ll be bruised and swollen (just), I can deal with the fact I’m going to have to shut up for a while (just), I can deal with the fact I am having to leave my beautiful baby whilst I recover (just), I can deal with the fact I’ll be effing broke as I can’t claim any benefits as a self-employed under 25 who can’t work for health reasons (just), I can deal with the claustrophobia of having my jaw banded shut (just), I can deal with the long and boring post-op liquid diet (just), I can deal with the weight loss (very easily, thank you very much) but I can’t deal with the fact MY FACE WILL CHANGE.

So do me a favour yeah, if I’m really ugly after this surgery then please still be my friend.

Thank you x

Nerve blocky block blocks

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:50:00 +0100

I haven’t written for ages (a trend!) partly through a lack of energy to bother (writing about feeling shit is not the first thing you instinctively want to do when you feel like shit) and partly because things have been wonderfully mentally busy. Yeah, you better believe I’m launching a new site months ahead of my surgery. Hey, people who use being ‘ill’ as an excuse to sit at home watching telly all day whilst claiming benefits - y u no learn from me? (I’m writing this a bit high, soz for self-congratultoryness).

My surgery has been brought forward to December, have I already blogged that? Maybe. I’ve had some pretty horrid ortho work done recently, but my dental arches are moving nicely in pre-surgery preparation. My teeth get gold stars. Cool.

I love my current cocktail of drugs but my levels of pain/uselessness are still annoying. I ate some Haribo the other weekend and ended up in bed for three days. Kinda annoying…espesh as cola bottles are, like, THE BEST.

So I had my first ever appointment with the ‘pain clinic’ a month or so ago and a very lovely anaesthetist referred me for nerve block therapy and trigger point injections - which I started today. I’m excited to see if it gives me a bit of a break.

It’s weird having injections in your head/spine. If you don’t like needles, you probably don’t want to think about it. I had four sets done altogether, a la this picture I nicked…

It felt very odd. I wasn’t sedated either - I AM SO BLOODY BRAVE - which meant that I felt all of it. They really dig the needles in and wiggle them about a lot, it’s a nasty kind of very sharp pain (especially if you think of *where* these big ass needles are being inserted) but the pumping of the steroids and local anesthetic is just the most bizarre feeling. You just feel like your skull and spine are being flooded with this odd painful burny fluid. But ever so often it kinda feels quite lovely - but that might be my sadistic/sick of it all tendencies. I had a nurse by my side just to stroke me. She was nice. And pretty. I liked her.

I had to lie on my front with my face in a pillow for this procedure and at one point I had a huge surge of panic go through me and thought I was going to die. I calmed myself down though. (Evidently, as I’m not dead). I pretended I was on America’s Next Top Model and that Tyra was watching how I handled the pain of going through the ‘dramatic makeover’ episode. I’m sure you ALL know the makeover episode that features each cycle… where they bleach the girls’ hair and cut it all off and the weak girls bitch and cry and the strong girls just put up with it and Tyra becomes their bezza? Yeah. That has become my odd ‘mental place’ that I go to in my head whenever I have really nasty procedures done. (Far too often at the moment, it has to be said). WHAT WOULD TYRA DO? It is my mantra. Slushy, huh?

Once the injections were finished and the bleeding had subsided, I was asked to flip over and lie down. VERY STRANGE. “Am I lying down?” I asked the nurse, like a complete numpty. It’s hard to explain what having a completely numb head feels like - but trust me that it’s odd not being able to feel the pillows beneath you.

So I stayed in hospital a while, stayed very still, counted ceiling tiles, read an amazingly tacky magazine…

And now I am at home with blankets and telly and chips.

The end xxx

p.s

Thank you Dr Fozard and Prof Haers, you rock.

Surgery booked! Braces on! Tally ho!

Fri, 06 May 2011 16:53:00 +0100

Yesterday I received a letter from The Royal Surrey about having hooks attached between all my teeth ahead of my surgery. Whilst I gagged at the thought of being all hook mouthed, (THIS IS PRECISELY WHY I DON’T EAT FISH), I realised I hadn’t updated here for a while and that actually quite a lot has happened in the past two months.

There’s quite a lot of good news actually. The best news is that my surgery (maxillary Le Fort I osteotomy and mandibular bilateral sagittal split osteotomy) will be done on the NHS. Because of various NHS cuts and my age (I’m old, apparently) it was looking unlikely that I would qualify, but then things got bad. And then they got worse. And then I made the grade :D

But better than that is that my private surgeon (the super duper superhero, world class, oh-my-god can I marry you please? surgeon) will be performing the operation. There are no words for how lucky I am to be getting this guy to do my op, and I am truly grateful that he pities me as much as he does. It makes me cry every time I see him. I am an arse. But yes, whilst I am gutted it took this long to meet NICE guidelines to have my surgery done with NHS funding, I am obviously pleased that this has worked out in the end.

And not only that, but I am actually booked in for the surgery too. It will be in January 2012. I often tell people this and they think that’s an insanely long way away but it has to be as my braces need time to “level and align the dental arches relative to their skeletal bases ahead of surgical alignment”. Check me with my medical lingo. It’s actually quite nice to have it in January though too, I can fatten up over Christmas then get wired shut and lose a bunch of weight ahead of Fashion Week in February. I’m hoping to be recovered enough to be out the house by February, because I ain’t missing LFW shiz for nobody. I don’t care if I’m still doing sign language and eating by syringe. I WILL BE THERE.

Pain wise? I am still in a considerable amount of pain (woooheee) but I am getting better at living with it now that I know the surgery isn’t too far away. My drugs are *amazing* and whilst it has taken bloody years to get the right mix of pain relief and relief from the side effects of said pain relief, I do believe I’ve got the winning cocktail now. It’s far from perfect, but I’m not planning my early demise any more. I never forget to take my tablets, because I know what happens when I do, so that’s rarely proving to be a problem. I’m supposed to be Ms Sober for the next year or so but gin does still play a part in my life. I’m just a weird slutty/sleepy drunk now, which is not always a bad thing.

My ears are still annoying and I’m pretty dizzy (seriously, if you want to see me stack it then ask me to navigate a spiral staircase) but that should all settle down once the jaw is happier.

I’ve been referred to the pain management clinic at the hospital now so I’m excited to see how they can help further with physio therapy, CBT, botox (really) and so on.

I’m pretty damn happy to be honest though! Largely that’s because my family and friends have been tremendous and because I’ve completely redressed the way I approach my work/play/rest balance. I don’t work on any projects that don’t meet the “Is this fucking awesome?” criteria and this has transformed everything beyond words. No idea why I didn’t do that sooner. Stupid how you often wait til you’re sick to get your priorities straight. There’s far more play now. So much more play. And whilst it can be very tiring on my pathetic face it’s so worth it. SO WORTH IT.

Yeah, my braces are fugly, but it’s all a much bigger picture. Yes, I’m fully aware that the surgery may not actually solve this shit, but they can’t do anything else until they’ve addressed the main underlying mechanical problem. I am excited. Very, very excited.

I HAVE A PROPER TREATMENT PLAN FROM THE BEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD AND SOON I WILL BE A ROBOT! Sort of.

Yey :D xxxxxxxxxxxx

A fortnight of appointments...

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:37:14 +0000

2011 has had a busy start on the medical front, but it has been positive. (I have been brainwashed to have this ‘sunny outlook’, I know it doesn’t suit me.)

Last week I met with my surgeon, orthodontist and neuromuscular dentist. More measurements were taken, x-rays were admired (I take a pretty picture) and lots of photos of my face, shoulders and hips (!!!) were taken. After much discussion, we agreed on my treatment plan for the coming 18 months. I was surprised by how unusual my condition is, with one of the most respected surgeons in the world telling me he’d only seen 20 cases like it in 30 years of surgery. My treatment plan isn’t really set in stone (bone?) as my jaw has proven to be a fairly unpredictable little bastard and thus things may deviate slightly. There’s a lot of ‘playing by ear’ to be done but, essentially, I will have traintrack braces for six months to help prepare me for surgery, I will then definitely have my upper jaw broken and moved about (Le Fort I osteotomy) and my lower jaw may have to be broken and manipulated too. After the surgery and the inevitably horrible recovery time, I will stay in braces to ‘finish me off’ and then the braces will come off and I’ll have restorative work done. It’s not a quick process (I’ve already been undergoing treatment for a couple of years and I have at least a couple more ahead) and they’re not entirely sure it will even work to reduce my pain, but it will improve my functionality (I’m describing myself as if I’m a robot) and I’ll be able to eat/sleep and talk like a proper human person again. Which will be nice. And if the pain is not significantly improved and I haven’t thrown myself down the stairs, they can get to looking at my neck more closely. But the first port of call = JAW.

My braces go on next week, so yesterday I saw my neuromuscular dentist to have some electromyography (EMG) analysis work done. I basically got wired up to a computer which analysed my muscle activity in my temporal, masseter, trapeze and *other I can’t remember* muscles. I looked like this man for a couple of hours….

The results were pretty fascinating and I’m *very* lucky to have had such clever clogs testing done here in the UK, apparently I’m only one of half a dozen patients who have had it on our fair island. So that’s kinda cool. Some of my results were a bit weird (heaven forbid they’d be normal) and so will be looked at by an even cleverer doctor person all the way in Seattle, but in general the results were as to be expected with my level of discomfort. My temporal muscles are pretty much flat lining because they’re chronically fatigued from years of supporting my horrid jaw, whilst the muscles in my neck are working eight times as hard as they should be even in their most relaxed state. They’re basically all over the place…and my left and right sides are behaving very differently, which makes sense as my left and right jaw joint are not equally unhappy. (I can still make my furthest back teeth meet on my left side, I cannot make contact at all on the right.) I had practically non-existent muscle recruitment, and I have no bite force at all. It all made a lot of sense and was a nice little bit of proof as to why my diet generally consists of painkillers and baby food. These results will help shape my treatment, and hopefully by the next time I have EMG analysis I’ll be getting ever so closer to healthy averages. I’ll have further EMG work done just before my surgery, after my surgery, then after the final braces are removed.

Whilst those results now go to my surgeon and orthodontist, I have also been having more ceph x-rays and chasing up all previous x-rays from the Homerton hospital to see how much my jaw structure has changed. Again, a lot of this is just to allow us to have good ‘before and after’ evidence, but my surgeon also needs to check that my jaw isn’t too weak to even have the surgery…because this isn’t the kinda shit you can do twice.

So today I had separators put between my back teeth to prepare me for having my braces fixed on next week. I am pretty much always in agony, but the pain in my mouth right now is at a new level of gag-dom. Pretty unhappy over here but POWERING THROUGH. Just. Yes.

The bands are blue and match my nails.

And as I suppose the bands are already working, I guess I should really document my official ‘before’ photos. This is my jaw fully closed, you can see how fugly my open bite is in all its glory…

Next time I post here will be with photos of my braces. If you laugh at my ugly traintrack mouth then I will punch you so hard that you’ll need your own jaw surgery, deal? DEAL. Don’t mess with brace face xxx

It's inspirational, innit

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:16:00 +0000

What is this shiz?

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:38:00 +0000

I don’t know when I am having my surgery, but this is where I’m going to blog about the journey from human to cyborg. I will technically only be like 0000.9% robot once I’m all metal platey, but for some reason picturing myself as a robot is helping make it all seem less scary. Robots are effing cool, after all.

I’ll try and keep this blog ‘upbeat’ but might not end up blogging that much at all. How much mileage can I possibly get from “today I drank a strawberry Complan through a syringe and didn’t say anything to anyone”? We’ll see I suppose.

In the meantime, you can read how I got to this stage here.

You can see my favourite outfit for a robot lady here.

xxx

I've gone...

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:03:52 +0100

Tumblr was good between the sheets but it was never meant to be. Posterous proposed, I said yes, we live in a beach house in California with a daughter and a sausage dog and all is just fine and dandy.

Tumblr is mega jealous, so is upstaging Posterous on the SEO front and lots of y’all still come to this site when you Google me….but I’m not here. I’ve gone.

Where I can now be found….

You can now find me posting daily outfits on WIWT - http://wiwt.co.uk

Or sometimes writing shiz here - http://poppyd.posterous.com

And obvs I’m on Twitter being boring snoring here - http://twitter.com/PoppyD

How to get your photos removed from a porn site.

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:09:00 +0100

My debut into the world of porn was an unexpected one. Like many (self-obsessed) people I have a Google Alert set up for my name, at some point before Christmas I was ‘alerted’ to the fact that eight or so pictures of me were being hosted on a rather crudely named ‘bustyskinny.com’. In case you haven’t heard of it, bustyskinny.com “brings you the most popular as well as the hard-to-find best natural busty skinny girls on the net. Some girls are models. Some girls are amateurs. But they are all naturally beautiful, busty, great boobs, skinny and thin.”

I’ll be perfectly honest here, my first thought was not “OH MY GOD THOSE BASTARDS!”, it was actually more along the lines of “Wooooo, someone thinks I’m naturally beautiful, busty, skinny and thin!”. As my hideous shopping trip for new jeans confirmed yesterday, skinny and thin I am not.

After a few moments of laughing about the ridiculousness of it all with my then boyfriend, I went to Google myself to see how well the porn site performed when my name was the search term. When the site came up at the top of page 2, well ahead of many of the blog posts I’d written, site profiles I had and so on, I began to worry. Having an unusual name like mine has pros and cons when it comes to social media, it’s very easy for people to piece together a lot about me with very little effort. I didn’t want potential business contacts, friends, family (or anyone really) to Google me and then think that I’d posted my pictures on to a porn site.

The pictures that were posted were not pornographic. I would have been mortified if naked pictures had turned up online without my permission, but these pictures were not in the least bit sexy. I’ve always thought I’d make a good porn star, with enough strategic sucking in I can take quite a good sex shot, but the lead photo in my smutty debut was one of me sulking, stroppy, sunburnt and starving waiting for my breakfast to arrive in a Tel Aviv beach cafe - GLAM! There were some bikini shots but, again, these were not ‘sexy photos’. They were certainly not photos from some private collection, these photos were on both my Facebook and Flickr accounts as part of much wider holiday sets. The other photos of girls on bustyskinny.com were pornographic though, some were pretty hardcore.

Anyway, I contacted the site and told them to remove the pictures and all reference to my name and then forgot all about it.

In May I got a DM from Paul Lomax, he’d Googled me and the fourth result was my page on BustySkinny. He kindly got in touch to let me know in case I wasn’t aware of it, I’m very glad he did (thanks Paul!) as I wasn’t aware that the page was quickly climbing the Google rankings. I realised it probably wasn’t something to be ignored and put a shout out on Twitter for any advice on how to get the pictures removed as emaling the site admin hadn’t worked, lots of people (notably Barry Vitou, Ben Metcalfe and Barnaby Gray) stepped up with advice. Within a few weeks, the pictures were removed (and I felt invincible and had a peculiar urge to sue lots of people).

There’s a US copyright law called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or DMCA for short, which protects you and I from having our copyrights infringed. If you ever find any of your photos being used without your permission, kinky or otherwise, then following these simple steps should help you get them removed…

Firstly, find out who hosts the website that is using your images. You can do this using a clever site like WhoIsHostingThis.com.

Then, email the hosting provider with a copyright infringement notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Your email needs to include the following:

A physical or electronic signature. [Statutory requirement 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(i)]
Actual identification of the material you claim violates your copyright. [Statutory requirement 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(ii)]
Sufficient information to enable the hosting provider to locate the actual material you claim infringes your copyright. [Statutory requirement 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii)]
Information reasonably sufficient to permit the hosting provider to contact you. [Statutory requirement 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(iv)]
The following statement:
“I have a good faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent of the law.”[Statutory requirement 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(v)]
The following statement:
“Under the penalty of perjury I state that the information contained in my complaint is accurate and I am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright I claim is infringed.”[Statutory requirement 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(vi)]

Now I’m no lawyer, obvs, but that worked for me. And if you ever find someone’s stolen your pictures without permission, then hopefully it will work for you too.

p.s

If the person who posted my pictures there is reading this, lemmeknow. I want to hurt you, kthxbai.

(Not quite Key) Lime Pie

Sat, 23 May 2009 20:01:10 +0100

So I haven’t posted here since February, and none of you have even bothered to question whether or not I had died. I can forgive you though, as I’m pretty certain that the only people who read this blog are my Twitter followers (who know by my incessant tweeting that I am very much alive and well) and my Mum. My Mum calls me around five times a day, she’ll know I’ve died before I do.

Why all this talk of death anyway? I don’t know. I’m here to talk about desserts, so I shall stop drawing attention to the fact I am a lazy blogger and get to the point - my ‘(Not quite Key) Lime Pie’.

Those close to me will know that I bloody love limes. They can transform about a zillion different recipes, make your fingers smell pretty after a good zesting session and can be used for one of my favourite (albeit dangerous) confessional games - ‘Clue or Lime?’.

I think desserts are possibly the reason that I was put on this planet, both to make them and to consume them. I will happily eat salad all week long if it means that I can gorge on profiteroles, tiramisu and treacle tart on the weekend and not feel even remotely guilty. There are few things more satisfying than cracking the perfectly scorched caramel of a creme brulee and revealing the wickedly creamy loveliness of what lies beneath.

I am not at home this weekend and so I wanted to make my hosts something to thank them for having me stay. I needed a recipe that was simple and fuss-free as I didn’t want to take over their kitchen, I also couldn’t be bothered to go to the shops so I wanted to use ingredients that they already had. Raiding their fridge and finding a bag of limes I quickly realised that my ‘(Not quite Key) Lime Pie’ was going to be the winning recipe. I call it ‘(Not quite Key) Lime Pie’ because the limes are not actually from the Keys, apparently they were from the Co-Op, and because it’s not really a traditional pie, it’s more of a cheesecake. That being said, it would be just as inaccurate to call it a ‘Co-Op Lime Cheesecake’ because there’s no cheese in the recipe either.

I digress.

To make this scrumptious dessert you will need…

For the base:

200g digestives (graham crackers for my Yank friends)

50g softened, unsalted butter

1 teaspoon of cocoa powder (optional)

½ teaspoon of ground ginger (optional)

For the filling:

Zest and juice of 4 lovely limes

300ml of double cream

397g tin of condensed milk

What you need to do…

The good news is that this recipe is so simple that even a monkey could make it. Start by chucking the softened butter, biscuits and cocoa powder and ginger (if using) into the food processor and whizz away until they’re all crumby and sticky looking. Once they look like the right consistency, press them into a 23cm springform tin. Personally, I line the tin because I don’t trust it not to be a bloody nightmare to remove at the end, so I’d suggest you line it too. Once you’ve made your base, stick it in the fridge.

Now on to the yummy part, the filling. Using an electric whisk, blend together all the remaining ingredients until they’re thick, creamy and you can’t resist putting your finger in every five seconds to taste it. Pour the mixture over the base, spread it about a bit with a spatula to make sure it’s nice and level and then stick it back in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (or until it’s set).

I don’t know how many people to say this serves as I am exceptionally greedy and very generous with my portion sizes, but it’s probably between 8 and 12. I serve it with single cream.

And that’s it I suppose, a fantastically easy and naughty dessert.

Do excuse the crap picture quality, blame the iPhone and the fact that by this point I was more concerned in eating it than photographing it.

Enjoy!

Living alone vs living with others....

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:32:00 +0000

I left home when I was 18 and, aside from popping back for the odd slice of banana bread or Sunday Lunch, I’ve lived independently ever since. I’ve had some rather nice addresses I must say, from living in super lovely WC1 to overlooking the sea on Third Avenue, Hove.

I’ve lived at my current London address for 18 months now, but this weekend marks the end of the first ever week that I have lived completely on my own.

So one week into solitary living, these are my thoughts on the pros and cons of living alone…

When you return home from work everything is exactly where you left it, no more hunting for the mobile phone charger which has miraculously disappeared since you used it that morning. But, if you left the place messy in the morning, there is zero chance it has been tidied by the time you return.

You get an entire bed to yourself, which means the joys of sleeping diagonally can be fully experienced and appreciated. The duvet is yours and only yours. But, the chances of a bit of hanky-panky are (understandably) greatly reduced when you’re sleeping alone.

You never go to wash your hair/brush your teeth/clean the dishes and find that the shampoo/toothpaste/fairy liquid has been finished by somebody else and not replaced. But, you take full financial responsibility for all of these annoying items that aren’t fun to shop for but are life’s little necessities.

It’s your night to choose what’s for dinner, every night of the week. No more arguing over whether spag bol deserves a weekly appearance on the menu (or was that just in my relationship?!). But, it’s always your turn to wash up.

When you want to work, sleep or relax you can actually do so in complete silence. But, sometimes it’s just a bit quieter than you’d really like it to be.

The wardrobe is yours. The wardrobe is yours. The wardrobe is yours. I dare you to find a downside to this point.

I was terrified I’d be lonely living on my own, but I find the pros definitely outweigh the cons (so far). I’m a bit confused as to how I will do ‘the big shop’ at Sainsburys on my own sans car, how do single vehicle-less people get their bags home?! I may as well warn you now that you may find yourself being drafted in to help me with that one.

I am praying to G-d, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Versace and anyone that will listen that I can negotiate my rent down so that I can afford to live here on my own for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, on the 15th of April I’ll be moving into new digs, most likely a flatshare with a bunch of strangers…an idea I find truly terrifying.

What's nu?

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:56:00 +0000

You know when you’re a kid and the Top 10 is about the most exciting event of the entire week? For me, it was even better than going for fish & chips after swimming club. The Top 40 itself was worth getting giddy for but when you got to the Top 10 you knew you were on to something special. After all, in them days you actually needed to sell quite a few copies of a single to make it in the charts. I remember the first two singles I bought with my own money, I bought them on the same day in an HMV in Chester and they were cassettes. It was 1998.

The singles?

‘Horny’ by Mousse T and ‘It’s Like That’ by Run DMC (Jason Nevins remix).

I still count ‘It’s Like That’ as one of my all time favourite choons and I don’t know what it says about me that I was singing ‘I’m horny’ at the top of my lungs when I was, ahem, 11.

Anyway, I digress.

Here’s the top ten new things with me…

I have an iPhone. It was a Valentine’s present to myself, because if you can’t love you then you can’t expect anyone else to. I’m a big fan of Tweetie, Locly and my new pet Koi carp.

2. I attended London Twestival. And wasn’t it lovely? A real treat to meet lots of online peeps in the ‘real world’ and to catch up with all those I’m fortunate enough to already spend a lot of time with…and all in the name of charity:water. Get drunk and save lives? Yes please.

3. I watched Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. I highly recommend you do the same if you like to laugh and wish we all lived in the dizzyingly glamourous world of Film Noir. Films like this one make me wish I smoked, it always looks so god darn sexy in black and white.

4. I nearly had a pigeon in my bank account. My new marital status means I’m looking for new digs, Spareroom has been a source of strength for me as I’m probably going to share with a bunch of strangers (as scary as I find the idea). I fell in love with a one bed apartment in Holborn which turned out to be a scam, if you see any ads where the contact email is atameliat@googlemail.com…run for the hills.

5. Globrix had a love-in with Twitter. We’ve integrated a ‘tweet this property’ button into all of our property listings on Globrix, so now you can pimp your favourite properties to your Twitter friends with one easy click.

6. @PropertyPorn was born. Love sexy houses? Like to pretend you have a few zillion pounds in a Swiss bank account somewhere? Follow @PropertyPorn for your daily fix of hardcore homes.

7. I realised that I need to sort my health out. I don’t know if it’s the Jade Goody tragedy on the front of every red top paper, or just the fact that for a 21 year old I seem to be sick pretty much all of the time, but I’m going to sort my life the hell out. The boys at work say BMF is the answer. I’m sure fruit and veg is involved too. It starts next week…but this time I mean it, kinda.

8. I admitted that Eastenders is a bit rubbish at the moment. I know, a bit late to the game aren’t I?

9. I watched a lot of Flight of the Conchords. And I wondered, why is Bret not my boyfriend? We were clearly meant to be.

10. I continued with the never ending mission in my head to marry Dustin Hoffman. I could make him so happy if given half a chance.

And that’s about it. A lot less exciting than a real Top 10 chart, but I didn’t make any guarantees at the beginning of this post, did I? Hmmmm.

Breakfast with Jeff Pulver and friends.

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:37:41 +0000

What the hell is wrong with me, do I have no discipline? Evidently not. Hence, this blog post is a week later than I would have liked to have posted it. But there my negativity will end, because meeting Jeff Pulver last week was a real treat. Positivity from this point forward :)

So, last week Mr Pulver hosted his first ever breakfast in London taaaahn. Around 50 people descended on the ICA to meet the man himself and, of course, to network with each other. I’ve been an avid follower of Jeff on Twitter (@JeffPulver), we’ve chatted on Facebook and we nearly met a couple of times in Israel, but the timing was always a little skew-whiff. But although we’ve conversed a lot on t’internet, I had never met Jeff ‘IRL’ until last week.

As with all of Jeff’s breakfasts, the guests were greeted with pens and stickers and encouraged to write their own personal tagline on their name badge and to keep another sticker blank for the other guests to ‘tag’ them. Now we’re all used to tagging our content online, but to tag each other…in real time? That’s nifty.

I’ve kept my tag cloud and stuck it in the back of my diary as it’s a nice little reminder of the event. Some of the people tagging me where complete strangers, others people I’ve spent a lot of time with.

Don’t worry, I know I’m crap at taking pictures (maybe I should upgrade from the camera on my mobile?!) so I have done the honourable thing and typed out my tags…

Social Medium
Girl
Lush (from @PhilCampbell, who is rather luscious himself)
Trusty Person
I am content
Twit Chick
Star on 12Seconds.TV
Followed by many
Muse (awwww, thanks Jeff!)
Touch texts
Listen (i.e don’t just look, from the lovely @loudmouthman)
Look up (i.e away from my booby area, again the always cheeky @loudmouthman)
I like your glasses
Likes chocolate
Tuc Tuc
Shower Periods (that one was the charming @PaulWalsh, see previous post for context!)

I liked tagging others and I liked being tagged, it was a great way to network. If you ever get a chance to go to one of Jeff’s breakfast, then go dammit!

I was also lucky enough to have dinner one on one with Jeff that evening, many wise words were shared…but now I’m just showing off.

Me in the shower...

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:18:52 +0000

It’s not so sexy is it?

Every three weeks or so I recreate the Psycho bathroom scene, all in the name of vanity.

Whenever I’m in hotels I worry they think I have some sort of vampire fetish when the maids have to collect my towels the next day.

Red hair comes at a price, don’t let anybody tell you differently.