Claire Tayler, or just Claire. Works as a social media writery type. Sometimes words make it onto this blog too. Her own views obviously. It would be ridiculous to have a blog otherwise.
Likes digital media, tech and advertising. Also likes adventures, music, making colourful food stuffs, and knitting socks, so content's a mix.
In her other bits of spare time, writes things for Bitchbuzz and Bored of Brighton, a one-a-day guide to Brighton.
Apparently The Freebutt, a lovely local live venue has a PR intern. Ed is nice, sounds like a real human, and a good example of seeding. He sent me a promo CD which now has a home at Jonathan’s. Chimes & Bells are a classically trained multi-instrumentalist turned Copenhagen indie scene type story. I’m starting to get a few emails dropping through for Bored of Brighton and PR pitching’s quite nice when done right. I hope it always looks this pretty.
When I went home for Christmas my Father dragged out an old camera of his. Apparently he used to have lots of fun habits including rally driving, motorbiking, and using hip leather-bound cameras. Brilliant coincidence.
I’ve never really used analogue and the camera’s got a separate light-meter which was lovely but prompted two pages of badly written notes in case I forgot everything the minute I took it out by myself. I’ve now progressing to the photo-taking speed of a bumbling tourist, which is progress. I left the flashgun and bulbs at home, because they’re fuzzy magnesium one-use-only and I don’t trust myself with analogue. My only previous experiences of it include watching my Father hide inside a heavy velvet curtain to change film. I always looked at film pots with some sort of awe.
But it’s lots of fun, and I’m very proud of the camera in a strange way. Although it occurs to me that I have to take the film out at some point.
I bought nice pens (nice for me as I do not buy pens aside from 10pence biros) and an artist pad, and we spent Sunday filling it with terrible drawings of dinosaurs that looked like dogs, dinosuars with unfinished shoes, and dinosaurs rebelling against corporations, and watching lots of Star Trek.
There are things I care more about than Prada or hectic fashion trends, but I was reading Fashionista this morning after reading about a recent PR blunder aimed at their writers. The top story this morning is Parada’s FW 2010 move to a Seventies Urban Jungle which sees an “unselfconscious take on retro dressing.”
I love this, mostly because whilst I come from a family with no inclination of following fashion, half of this can currently be found worn by my Father either as old jumpers reused for engineering, tree-felling and odd-job outfits, or hidden in an old wardrobe. I occasionally pop in to the wardrobe see if either of my parents’ 70s brown sheepskin-collared coats have suddenly decided to suit me but it never changes. (Adrian Mole would envy me though)
The above image is a dead cert of what my Dad wears to fix cars, minus the jacket. On the other hand, I suspect the catwalk sound track is less of his thing. (More on this at BitchBuzz)
In appealing to my love of vile cheesy music, I love this mix up. But I’m also pleased that I don’t know half of the songs. DJ Earworm (yes), the author, recommends ‘Ableton Live‘ music software, which I might trial but I’m abundantly terrible with music and suspect there’s not enough software in the world that’ll help this.
It wasn’t all bad in 2009 though. I suddenly leapt on the Cat Stevens band wagon and got stuck into the Harold and Maude soundtrack (a film I love) for a long time. I heard some fantastic live sessions via BBC 2 I need to hunt down. Brilliant recordings, and he’s such a damn hippy.
