Taylor Swift goes all political and I love it.

I've watched a lot of Ru Paul recently. It's got all of what you want from a reality show - bitchiness, falls from grace, funny tasks but it's got something more meaningful too. It's real mission is to make Drag Queens and the wider gay community more accepted by celebrating their creativity and bravery. 

So I was primed to love Taylor Swift's new video "You need to calm down". The song is a statement of support for the LGBT community and the people who need to calm down are the right wing redneck bigots. 

In Swifts video the bigots are the unbeautiful ones failing to see that if they just calmed down they too could be having fun and friendship. 

And Swift makes this clear by inviting her once rival Katy Perry, who's first hit was I Kissed a Girl, to join her dressed as a Big Mac. We go together like a burger and fries she shows us and it's kinda heartwarming. 

Many of Swifts other friends make cameos. On her YouTube page they are listed in alphabetical order - a nice equalitarian touch to match the message of her song. They are: 

A'keria Davenport

Adam Lambert

Adam Rippon

Adore Delano

Antoni Porowski

Billy Porter

Bobby Berk

Chester Lockhart

Ciara

Delta Work

Dexter Mayfield

Ellen Degeneres

Hannah Hart

Hayley Kiyoko

Jade Jolie

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Jonathan Van Ness

Justin Mikita

Karamo Brown

Katy Perry

Laverne Cox

Riley Knoxx

Rupaul

Ryan Reynolds

Tan France

Tatianna

Todrick Hall

Trinity K Bonet

Trinity Taylor

Watch the full video here:

I actually really like the song too.

I had a crush on you in Secondary School (the sequel to I had a crush on you in Primary School).

The time has come to fess up to my secondary school crushes (that's high school for you Americans). For some reason even though I am 31 this seems a little more embarrassing - partly because I still occasionally speak to these people. But the point is we've all moved on and it will be a laugh to write about what once was so important to my teenage heart. It's been 13 years since I saw most of them, after all. So...

Luke Hanson (aka Luke Handsome)
Everyone fancied Luke in lower school. He was just so cool. Once, when I had my hair cut into a bob he stopped to tell me that I looked nice. I think even the soles of my feet blushed. Of course Luke is still lovely and my Facebook friend. Hi Luke - yes I kinda loved you.

Simon Lawton (aka my best friend Jen's bf)
This crush lasted quite a few years. It even survived the time when Simon was forced to sit by me in Maths and let out a large fart. I was much too shy to talk to Simon and in the whole time I was at school I don't think I managed one sentence. In about year 3 a girl called Beth decided to stand up in Health ed and announce to the whole class, "Aimee fancies Simon". Beth (if you're reading this) I still think you're a bitch. Yes this particular love story was not a happy one as Simon even went out with my best friend Jen. Pure torture.

Simon Lucus (aka Slime 'n' Mucus)
Simon was one of the only male friends I had in Secondary School. He wasn't cool, but neither was I. We were drama club kids and hung out as prefects. Simon had a very annoying habit of sitting on the floor moaning about how he couldn't get a girlfriend and that none fancied him. I lent on the wall opposite thinking about how I fancied him and how irritating he was at the same time. Us girls who fancied Simon (there were a couple) consoled ourselves with discussions about how he was probably gay. We were wrong it turned out. Simon's also my FB friend. Hi Simon :)

Dan don't know his surname (aka hot Dan)
I kissed Dan, a very hot guy in the year above, in Time and Envy nightclub on the dance floor. Telling my fried Mary the next day she exclaimed: "YOU? Kissed Dan? But he's so hot!?". A little insulting. Then I kissed him again the next weekend. At that point my "friend" Jen asked the DJ to congratulate Aimee and Dan on "their new arrival". You can always rely on friends to embarrass you. On the Monday in school I was informed that Dan already had a girlfriend in our year and she'd probably beat me up. She was little but she looked scrappy so I spent the next month hiding from her.

John Parfitt (aka John Perfect)
Ahhh my 6th form crush. I used to play The Sims on the computer and make John's character fall in love with my character. I even fancied John when he went through the dodgy blonde tipped hair do. Finally it came to the leaving do in Bentley's nightclub. Thinking that I was finally released from having to face school the next day (or ever again) I had a spurt of courage. I stormed up to John grabbed him and shouted over the music: "So are you gonna ask me to dance or what?". My charm worked. Either that or the black satin top with chains I lent from my sister for pulling purposes.

John if you're reading this - your kids are very cute.

And that was it. School had ended. I had a couple of boyfriends mixed in. I'm not counting them as crushes - they'd be a whole other blog post. Reading my old diaries I think I was open to crushes on a lot of people. Not my fault - blame it on the crazy teenage hormones. But these were the ones I really remember.

If you have a funny school crush story do share. I'd love to hear it.

I had a crush on you in Primary School.

I just read a lovely article in The Guardian by Caitlin Moran in which she told the story of her first love. Read it here. And it made me think it would be quite fun to write about my own. A confessional if you will. So here goes. Here's everyone I loved at primary school.

Age 5.
Living in Reading aged 5 I loved a cross-eyed little boy in the year below. I think his name was Peter. I never talked to Peter but I used to look at him and think that when he grew up he'd look like Prince Charming from Disney's Cinderella. That's when I would swoop in and marry him. By then his eyes would be sorted I presumed. This thought that my future was already a dead cert made me feel all content inside. I never got to find out if I was right though as, at the age of 6, my family cruelly moved me to Swansea. That's when my love life went to pot. Thanks family.

Age 6.
Aged 6 I had a dream that I woke up, got out of bed, opened the cupboard and a little green alien was standing inside. This green alien was David Bowie (I'd been watching the Labyrinth a lot). He had come to feed me medicine which would kill me. Weirdly enough I woke up and, instead of crying, realised that I was in love with David Bowie. I was very aware that there was a huge age gap between us. So I prayed to God to make him cryogenically freeze David Bowie so that he could be defrosted at a time when I was old enough to marry him. God let me down.

Age 7.
My friend Julia and I used to play with a boy called Eddie in our class. One day we both decided we wanted to go out with him. We didn't really know what "going out with meant" so we saw no reason why we couldn't do a group arrangement. So I ran up to him at breaktime and said, "Eddie will you go out with Julia and I?" Eddie replied, "No!", then ran to tell our friend Jessie who actually was going out with him. We had not known this. After that we didn't play together any more.

Aged 9.
This is when I had a crush on a blonde boy in the year above. I can't remember this boy's name but he was the best friend of the coolest boy in school who used to win the Eisteddfod every year with his choir boy voice. I thought the fact that I loved his best friend instead meant I had more discerning taste than every other child. That year I managed to get into the folk dancing school team and so did he so this meant lots of time on coaches to dance events mooning over blonde boy. Then he went to secondary school never even having looked at me.

Aged 10.
The coolest boy in my class was called Robert. He and his best friend Satvinda used to sit by me and think of ways to humiliate me. One day they asked me, "Aimee, have you ever seen a Peacock?". Wise to the fact this question was not an innocent one I thought carefully about my reply. It must be a test to see how worldly I was, I thought. "Yes", I replied smiling, "in the park". To this they burst out laughing, "haha, Aimee saw a cock in the park!" Fail. In the following year one of Robert's friends came up to me in class and told me, "Robert said he fancies you". Me? Well I obviously forgot all the mockery of the previous year and fell a little bit in love with him. But I was way to shy to do anything so I promised myself that when I got to secondary school I'd start having boyfriends.

yes. Everything would be great at Secondary School....

Adverts like soap operas.

There is a dream that copywriters and art directors and even clients share. And that dream is to create an advert that will not only sell the product in question, but be enjoyable to watch too. An advert that people are interested in seeing again, or look forward to the next. 

One technique is the soap opera. 

Daz tried it in their very low brow Eastenders type way - "who's been starching Sandy's draws? OH its the Milkman with his box of Daz". Kenco tried it with their boring love story. And BT tried it in their modern fuzzy family - taking on the step children way. But no one has done it like Prada darling. 

Prada's new advert for their scent Prada Candy is directed by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. So of course it's good. Plus it's French - très chic. It tells the story of Candy who is courted by two men whom she can't choose between - after all they are very similar looking. The men are so smitten (she looks and smells divine) that neither will give up.  Get your popcorn ready.

Part 1.

So how will this relationship progress?  Find out in part 2!

Who will she choose? The guy who took her out or the one with great cake choosing skills? Find out in Part 3. 

Clever girl - who needs to choose anyway?

Falling in love in Bali.

I've done a lot of falling in love recently and its really taken the puff out of me. But what can you do when you've been to the beautiful island of Bali and some of your heart has stayed there. Parts of my heart have been dropped in the blue waters just off the Gili islands and been eaten by sea turtles. Some has been stolen by naughty monkeys in the monkey forest at Ubud. Some of my heart got left in the hotel shuttle bus with the long eye-lashed giggling Balinese guy who hummed out-of-tune to the radio every day. Some of my heart got swept away with the plates in Naughty Nuri's rib shack, to be licked clean by hungry travellers. Some drifted away bumping into rocks while white water rafting, and now floats between the steep palm tree covered slopes of the valley, driven under by tumbling waterfalls. I gave some of my heart away in return for the birthday cake from hotel Tepi Sawer and the polo shirt given as a gift to my Fiance. I gave some in payment for the bronze statue of Ganesh and the detailed story of his life written by the shop assistants. And I left bits of my heart all over Bali as my offerings to the gods, trod underfoot on pavements, by fat god statues, ones with big sharp teeth, ones with big hanging breasts, on walls, in temples, in restaurants in shops. So you'll see there isn't much of my heart left for London.