Author / Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Great British Chefs: Summertime, Action Against Hunger and Blogging!

I’m really very excited, as my very first post for Great British Chefs has appeared on their blog today! Being me, I managed to combine social media and food in a post, asking about the future of food programming and the role of platforms like Twitter in developing the competition and campaigning side of things.

I consider myself extremely privileged to have now appeared on four sites I regularly enjoy reading (BitchBuzz, Bea Magazine, The F Word and now GBC), talking about all my favourite things.

And speaking of GBC, campaigning and privilege, have you downloaded the new Summertime app yet? You should, because it’s ace.  One of the things I really love about GBC apps is the emphasis on really beautiful design; I don’t think I’ve ever actually made anything from Feastive which is not a failing of the app’s, but entirely my own; still, I could look at it all day. Plus I think I’ve mentioned before – about four million times – what a Wareing fangirl I am, and his recipes appear on both. But what’s really special about Summertime, apart from its current relevance, is that it was developed in partnership with Ocado which has allowed GBC to donate all the proceeds to Action Against Hunger. It’s priced at £1.99, of which at least £1.20 goes to the charity. Just £36 can provide a month’s supply of therapeutic nutritional products (such as Plumpy’nut, for example) to nurse a severely malnourished child back to health. That’s maybe thirty app downloads – and of course there’s nothing stopping you heading to their website to donate too.

Food! Technology! Non-profits! Blogging! It’s a Christmassy day in August. And now I’m off to write a review of Brave for BitchBuzz, which means two more of my very favourite things in the world: reviews and Disney.

Bloody hell, I’m a lucky woman.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Happy Birthday, Dear Pickle

birthday 2 candleI am now mother to a two year old. That is all kinds of weird. But also all kinds of brilliant. The funny thing is, I was really terrified of this stage, but while it’s nothing like easy, it is less horrifying, and far more enjoyable, than I expected. The tantrums, while louder and more stubborn than before, are also more avoidable; when they’re old enough to have things explained to them, and can have more forewarning, you can head certain issues off at the pass.

Reading a book and sneaking a cuddle have always been wonderful things, but now they’re even more wonderful because she’s so engaged with what’s going on. She’s memorised her current favourites (The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Slinky Malinki and Wocket in my Pocket this week) and can narrate them aloud even with no book in front of her. It’s almost like I’ve accidentally trained a Victorian child to read poetry to the class! What’s really funny is she keeps in my inflections too, so it’s like listening to a slightly scrambled radio recording of myself being beamed scratchily in from somewhere in the wilds of Eastern Europe:

Shlinky Malinki was blackern black!
A TALKING and YURKING aventchrus cat!
He had bright yeyyow eyes,
A WAR-bing wayul,
An’ kink at end of his YONG black tayul.

I could listen to this all day. Or this:

Once there was a yittle girl called SO-phie, and she was having tea wiv her Mummy  in the KITCH-en. Sudd’ly, there was ring at the DOOR.

Sophie’s Mummy said, “I wonder who can THAT can be?”…

When she recites “It can’t be DADDY because he’s got his KEY”, she tends to interject “a other one Daddy”, in case I think the book is about her Dad. “A other one” always makes me laugh; her bed time snuggle toys are called Weasel and A Other One Weasel.

She was very excited about her birthday, and kept announcing “is gonna be my BIRTHDAY soon, and I will have a birthday cake and blow out candles” – which is indeed exactly what happened. In fact we made a cake together on the day before, which then got chopped up and sent off to nursery, and then I made cupcakes the following day, which she enjoyed and which went down well with all the family. I’ve finally decided that life is too short for making frosting – I enjoy the baking bit so much more – and made Hummingbird Bakery recipe red velvet cupcakes* topped with piped on canned Betty Crocker vanilla icing. I then got out my decorating stash – red glitter, candy polka dots, jelly diamonds and sprinkles – and even used the mini chopper to blitz the thin slices I’d ended up with when levelling a couple of the cakes and sprinkled the crumbs on as a decoration.

The results can be seen here:

birthday cupcakes - red velvet and vanilla icing

And the ritual candle-blowing here. I wasn’t helping, honest:

Pickle Birthday Candles Alexandra R. Goldstein

I hadn’t intended to get Ramona very much for her birthday as she’s only two and has a full complement of grandparents and other relatives ready to spoil her, but I ended up going shopping that morning and splurging without quite meaning to. The official present from Mummy and Daddy was her first Peppa Pig playset (she loves playing with some her cousins have), but she also now has some gorgeous new clothes from the fantastic Tootsa MacGinty – I can only afford them in the sale, but it’s worth the wait! – and a really lovely range at M&S (I want these trousers in my size, too! Including the adjustable waist for after cake…!). She’s also already got stuck into reading Meg on the Moon (or, as she called it, “Meg Goes to the Moon”) and Dr Seuss’s ABC. What can I say? She’s a lucky pickle.

Even luckier, she’s actually having a party in a couple of weeks when more family can join us, so she’ll be getting more birthday cakes than years she’s been alive. Which sounds like a very good deal to me.

Two years of brilliant. And so many more to come. We’re all very lucky.

*My mother has given me two excellent pieces of baking advice (other than the obvious – Know Your Oven**) which have stood me in very good stead. 1) Unless your recipe genuinely depends on using butter, use Stork instead. 2) Unless your cake is supposed to be dense, use self-raising flour for everything, even when it says plain and you’re adding more raising agents. Fluffiest. Cakes. Ever. Trust me.

**No, really. I baked the first cake at 160 for 22 minutes, and the cupcakes for 13 minutes, again at 160. I just know that for most sponge-type cakes that’s the optimal temperature for this oven. Cookies are a very good way to find out if your oven heats unevenly, as you’ll be able to see the overcooked ones, and can open the oven door to check them which you can’t do with a cake.

Thus endeth the very amateur baking lesson. 

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Book Obsession: Amelia Peabody Mysteries

I have a confession: I’m a little bit obsessed with murder mysteries.

And I’m not just talking about the gritty, modern types like Mark Billingham’s Thorne series – though I’ve read all of those now, I think. And there’s such a thing as too gritty; Jeffrey Deaver and Patricia Cornwell largely leave me feeling feeling ill, rather than exhilarated and slightly spooked. But I will admit to a fondess for Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.

Back to the point.

My other fondness is for classic mysteries that are steeped in their period, the most obviously example being Agatha Christie. On summer holiday after summer holiday in Greece I’d plough through Marple after Marple, Poirot after Poirot and occasionally dip into those weird ones like Death Comes as the End.

And it’s funny I should think of one set in Ancient Egypt, because that particular period is the focus of my new mystery heroine, Amelia Peabody.

Amelia, a Victorian feminist Egyptologist-slash-detective, is the creation of Elizabeth Peters (a pseudonym for American author and, funnily enough, Egyptologist Barbara Mertz), and I’m utterly in love with her. Her story begins with the birth of her independence; sole daughter to a father who also has worthless sons, she has been left with the burden of nursing him through old age. Without a decent son to heap such privileges on, she is able to access a far more comprehensive education than most women. She also inherits the family wealth, and sets out on a solo trip to Egypt to indulge her passions. But almost as soon as she arrives, she stumbles from one peculiar incident to another, and murderous intent is in the air…

The series has now swelled to more than fifteen volumes, and Amelia has amassed an extended family, but even many books later – with grown up children – she doesn’t lose her edge. She doesn’t just pay lip service to feminism; she lives it. Thanks to her education, she quickly picks up the moniker of the ‘lady doctor’, and while the early novels repeatedly stress her dedication to breaking female convention and fighting for opportunities and rights for her sisters, subsequent volumes see her facing her own latent prejudices and class and race privilege as well.

It’s inevitable that in some of the exchanges with the locals in Egypt there is going to be an element of uncomfortable colonialism. There’s also the inescapable sense of gracious white saviours, at least at first, although care is taken to stress the abilities of the local women to figure out their own ways of gaining power (though sadly this is often, though not always, through the sex trade, criminal enterprise or similar). Over time that starts to erode, and relationships grow to the point that they become known as her ‘Egyptian family’ even before that bond is cemented in law by a marriage. Several Egyptian women emerge as progressive and trailblazing in their own right, fighting for opportunities and status rather than having it graciously conferred on them.

Is it perfect? No. What is? Amelia is a woman who still carries enormous privilege, even as she lives in a world with very restricted roles for women. But what’s great is that the books tackle those issues head on in a way I’ve not seen in a long time – and certainly not in this setting before.

Best of all, they’re written in the most marvellously indulgent fashion. Sometimes when I ready back through my writing, I realise I have a bit of a fondness for slightly old-fashioned terminology (‘marvellously’, for one, and I’m also keen on ‘rather’); here I can indulge in that to my heart’s content. Amelia’s erudition is a delicious masterclass in Victorian melodrama. She doesn’t think, he ‘ratiocinates’. There’s a shadowy figure that dogs their heels over several books that she insists – to everyone’s annoyance – on labelling “the Master Criminal”. She lectures and quotes, pontificates and pries; in summary, she’s absolutely wonderful.

It’s impressive how well American Peters has come down on the right side of tea-drinking, carriage-riding twee-tastic Englishness, too. Although there is an element of cariacature, it’s all swept up in the general overblown nonsense of it all. The icing on the cake is a strong vein of wry humour and a cheeky nod to sexual chemistry – the series could teach E. L. James a thing or two about subtlety since it’s extremely passionate without a single graphic moment.

I’m very grateful for my beautiful and brilliant friend, and fellow Bea contributor, Erin Leclerc, for recommending these books to me. I got the first four in a bargain collection for Kindle, and suggest that if any of that sounds appealing, you do so too. Or buy paper versions. Or visit a library. Go on, then.

Enjoy.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Ramona and the Great Toddler Toothbrushing Wars

Excuse me while I indulge in some blogging that is really only going to be of interest to anyone who has primary caregiving duty for a teeny, tiny person. But I dare to believe that to those people this might actually be a worthwhile read.

See, parenting is one of the very few cases where anecdotal evidence can actually be helpful. Of course, only to a point – you have to then apply what you’ve learned to your own child, who is both exactly the same as and completely different from every other child, but sometimes just knowing another parent was in the same leaky, rickety boat and managed (even temporarily) to shift to a shiny new seaworthy dinghy is all you need to feel a lot better. So here goes.

Having politely complied with having her teeth brushed since they first started coming through, around 11 months, it wasn’t until around 22 months that any issues with toothbrushing flared up. First it was wanting to do it herself, but then not wanting to do it. Then it was complaining that her gums hurt (understandable; she’s not got all those teeth yet). Then “my tongue hurts!” and refusing to even do the bit of the process she’d always approached with some gusto: eating the toothpaste. Some nights she’d be okay, some not, and it gradually got worse.

For a while we ended up basically having to brush by force, which made me feel like a rotten, rotten parent who was creating more fear around toothbrushing instead of less. I reached my limit on about the third occasion on which I had to resort to this, when afterwards she sniffled at me that “I cried and said no but Mummy brushed my teeth.” The words sent absolute shivers down my spine – what the Hell was I teaching her?  Things were going to change, starting the next night.

I called out for advice on Twitter, and got the following recommendations:

  • Nicer tasting toothpaste (I suspected myself this might help – perhaps the Colgate Milk Teeth was just too minty and was burning her tongue? I find the same with some grown-up toothpastes).
  • A reward chart (too young?)
  • Telling her she wouldn’t ever be allowed sugary things to eat or drink again (I don’t think she has the concept of consequences that aren’t absolutely immediate down well enough for this one; also, it’s impractical as I’m not the only one who feeds her).
  • Funny songs / rituals around the toothbrushing – brushing toys’ teeth (she also brushes their eyes, noses and ears…), applying toothpaste herself etc.

In the end, I went for a combination of the first and last. Ashley brought home some Cars-themed “fruit punch” flavoured toothpaste which, to my mint-honed gnashers, tastes absolutely vile and sickly, and smells it too. Ramona squeezed a little on her finger and made me taste it first (small empress that she is), and then hesitantly popped some in her mouth while I made effusive yummy noises.

“Mmmm, yummy,” I prompted.

“Mmmm, yucky,” she replied.

Still, curiosity had got the better of her – particularly as the toothpaste is a deep blue instead of boring white – and she kept sampling it until we had to risk a big, waily tantrum taking it away.

The next couple of nights were a bit hairy, as she much preferred applying the toothpaste to her finger than her toothbrush, but we worked out a deal whereby if she brushed her teeth thoroughly herself using the brush, her reward could be a small glob of toothpaste on her finger as a treat to munch on. She started requesting that I sing one of her flavour-of-the-month songs at the same time, and that’s become part of the ritual too: “Mummy will sing X while you brush your teeth… oh, good brushing! Now you can have a bit on your finger.”

To try and cement this progress and add more fun to proceedings, I treated her to a new toothbrush today after a visit to the Disney Store (during which I was very proud to note she behaved impeccably). Near bedtime I produced the surprise from my bag and she carefully examined her new Mickey brush, which flashes a red light for two minutes to aid brushing. She’s still a bit small for that feature to be anything but a fun game, but she carried on intermittently chewing the brush / brushing her teeth right through all our bedtime lullabies, only surrendering the brush to actually get into bed.

I’m keeping my fingers tentatively crossed that a combination of a more palatable paste and creating more fun around the brushing itself has done the trick… let’s wait and see.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Chinwag & Our Social Times Facebook Marketing 2012: My thoughts

On Wednesday, I went along to Chinwag and Our Social Times’ Facebook Marketing conference. The main reason for attending was, as you might have guessed, to find out more about Edgerank.

Running Dogs Trust’s Page puts us in quite an enviable position, numbers-wise, given the community has swelled to over 440,000 people entirely organically; it was 1,000-strong when I started at the charity in 2008, as the Page had been there – well ahead of many other UK non-profits – since December 2007. We’ve seen every single iteration of the Pages structure. Numbers are, clearly, not everything, and they certainly don’t guarantee engagement, but they do add a certain amount of serendipity, shall we say, and give us more options for more organic growth than someone starting out now in such a saturated environment.

Still, with Facebook restricting the number of people who see posts, the jig is up. We always aimed to create quality content, but now Facebook is basically throwing down the gauntlet and demanding it. Which, though it’s a cold-shower style reminder that the community of people like you that you and your team helped build doesn’t actually belong to you, is actually a very welcome challenge. Tools are just tools – Facebook is not the objective – but each one has its rules and its culture, and if you’re going to demand attention on a busy, crowded platform, you’d better have a good reason for it.

Beyond getting some tips to improve content – or at least reassurance that we’re starting to think about it in the right kinds of ways – I also wanted to know more about Facebook ads and using them judiciously around certain campaigns or issues.

So, my real stand-outs / takeaways from the day:

  • Hearing directly from Andy Pang of Facebook was excellent. Although he didn’t say anything I couldn’t have guessed, and a lot of it was an understandable sales pitch for the kind of metrics and campaign success Facebook claims to be able to achieve, it was actually really good confirmation that I have the right understanding of where Facebook is going. Sometimes what seems obvious isn’t, and here it’s nice to know that things are exactly as they seem. Facebook is looking to get us to treat our communities with respect, create fantastic content and then to pay them to help properly disseminate it, and that really is all there is to it.
  • Dom Dwight of Yorkshire Tea gave a presentation that was so on-brand it was actually funny: personable, warm, entertaining. More importantly, he was willing to talk about content that does and doesn’t work. We’ve known for a while that video viewers are more demanding and have a shorter attention span than ever, and I think that – like YT – we need to consider better ways to get our video messages across. In common with every other organisation, we’ve had to undertake our own little culture shift internally as new technologies emerge, and we’ve had the absolute privilege of getting a lot of our front-line centre staff on board over the last couple of years. They’re amazing, and we want to do them proud, so we need to give them even more tools and tips to help us help them.
  • We Are Social‘s Tom Ollerton, talking about Heinz, was also great at picking apart a certain level of detail beyond ‘this was really cool’, by bringing up specific errors that helped them through the various iterations of Facebook Campaign (eg always send an email confirmation if you’re giving away a product!).
  • Hearing about the thinking behind Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and their Thanks a Million campaign and getting insight into Richard Ayers work with Manchester City FC and the BFI covered a huge range of interaction, from the conceptually simple (though expensive) to online engagement that comes from building slower offline community relationships. It was nice to see a wide range of community size, reach and budget. In a funny way, it did come across how it’s so much easier to be simple when you have a lot of money to put into it.

And the things I would have liked to see more of:

  • A couple of people I was chatting to agreed that a greater focus on ads and the difference in performance between different kinds of ads would be good. A few people mentioned that social elements got much better click rates and brand recall rates (ie if your friend’s name is in the post, you’re more likely to remember / buy), but perhaps a break-out session on the nitty gritty of sponsored posts vs other forms of advertising would be helpful in the future.
  • There was a LOT going on, and some variation in format beyond presentation and panel would probably help the day become less of a blur towards the end. The “quick-fire” agency case studies were ten-fifteen minutes from each one, and fraction dry  – not a criticism of the speakers at all, just perhaps not the ideal format. I think throwing in a Pecha Kucha type session there, or perhaps splitting up groups into smaller break-outs that allowed more interaction from the audience would be idea.
  • 22 speakers… 6 women (one of whom had a seriously curtailed piece due to timing issues). One speaker with an ethnic background other than White British. All speakers aged 25-45. There are so many interesting and amazing people in this field, that – without taking anything away from the uniformly excellent people we heard from – a little diversity would go an awfully long way…

And yes, I did put most of this – praise included – on my feedback form, rather than just waiting to blurt it all out online. Under my real name, too. So there.

All-in-all, I did feel it was worthwhile attending and, on top of the individual tips I took away, I had a mental list and scribbled notes* under the general heading of WAYS TO MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER AND BE GENERALLY BRILLIANT OMG. We all need a little kick up the backside now and then, and seeing the great work that other people are doing online is an excellent way to self-administer it.

*During Tom’s presentation, I wrote down a quick-fire list of 10 off-the-top-of-my-head, fun, ridiculous, it might never work ideas and everyday “we could do this right now” suggestions and I’ve already brought up three of them in the office. I was actually listening to Tom at the same time. I’m quite impressed by my bit of multitasking there, and recommend that you try the same yourself if you haven’t brainstormed like that recently. Preferably not while someone else is talking, cos that’s just plain rude. I mean, really.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Hey, look! A new header!

I felt the need for a header that spoke more of me, and happily I seem to live with Designerus Domesticus, or the common or garden graphics hipster. He’s great, isn’t he? (He works for these lovely people if you think he could be great for you too. You know, in a more appropriate way.)

I asked him to draw inspiration from the classic EPCOT Center designs of the 80s since that’s my Disney Golden Age (every fan, except maybe the brand new ones, has one) and it seems extra appropriate as we approach my very favourite park in the world’s 30th birthday. Since I can’t be there in person…

I still have my mouse ears, but sadly I have long since lost my rainbow-hued, red-brimmed sun visor with the old logo. This is my way of bringing it back into my life a little.

And now, back to business.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 23 months (The Disney Edition)

Honestly, I’m not sure how much this is going to be about Ramona and how much this is going to be about shopping. All of this happened today, so it’s all kind of rolled into one in my head, and I don’t have the inclination to separate it into two posts.

You can cut straight to the shopping if you prefer – it’s where the photos start. First, Ramona:

My tiny Pickle is not so tiny anymore – of course, she hasn’t been for a while. I’m occasionally blindsided by how weird it isn’t to have proper conversations with her, and this week we even had to start introducing the idea of naughty steps and consequences for bad behaviour that haven’t really made sense before. As with most children she is blissfully angelic and unconscionably demonic, generally within the same ten minutes. As I often say, I wouldn’t swap her forthright knowledge of what she wants, and her determination for getting it, for any kind of deferential wallflowery, but it would be lovely if she didn’t turn the former on me quite so often…

Biting is occasionally becoming an issue where it never was before, and after a particularly painful one in the middle of a tantrum today I got seriously miffed. Rather than stay in the room and lose my temper, I plopped her down, summoned her dad and left to cool off. I still felt bad, because I know it was a punishment for her to be separated from me (how arrogant that sounds! But that’s motherhood for you…), but I thought that was better than me behaving like an idiot in her presence. I came back down after a few minutes, she apologised, we had a massive cuddle and talked about why we don’t bite, and all was well.

And actually, that was the low point in what was a really impressive day for her. (Here’s where the Disney stuff starts too). We popped to Westfield, and she does love to visit the Disney Store, but last time we had to tear Mickey from her vice-like grip and cart her, wailing, out of the House of Mouse. This time, I did some preparatory groundwork, talking about not touching, only looking, and not being able to take things home. I was still prepared for a possible meltdown, but none came. She padded about happily, keeping her sticky paws to herself, identified her various friends – “Mickey! Daisy! Don-old! Goo-feeee!” – and was then content to leave after a few minutes, with a smile on her face. We rode up and down some elevators, and she even let me do a bit of shopping…

So, the upshot is I now have five Uniqlo / Disney t-shirts. It started with the bow one I wear in the photos on this very blog, and then I bought another four today. In my defence they are just £7.90 each, and fit me really well. They’ve got a really long body, which I often find is a huge problem with t-shirts – I had to stop buying from Threadless, because they looked like they were cutting me in half as I’m both tall and generous of belly – and the designs are a little bit more like what you get in Disney Parks, than what you get in the Disney Store. They’re also quite generously sized. I’m an M&S 14, and I comfortably fit the Medium.

Here they are:

These two are from the Uniqlo Uncovered range. They’re very slightly longer, and have a textured background colour, and you’ll find them on hangers in the shop. They also have “Uniqlo Uncovered” in smallish caps across the upper left hand side of the back of the shirt.

These two are from the standard Uniqlo Disney range, which you find on the shelves. Lots of these designs come in a range of background colours (for example, the lemon yellow Minnie bow one I’m wearing in the photos is also available in pink, as is the blue t-shirt in this photo).

And here’s me looking like a classic doofus in the mirror in the Snow White one.

In spite of my enthusiastic acceptance of the WDW ride’s overdue retirement, I still have a lot of love for Disney’s first feature length film, and I’m a sucker for a castle.

(The teapot necklace, by the way, is from Jelly Button Jewellery, which I absolutely love).

Naturally, the quirky attention to detail is typical of both Disney and a Japanese brand, and extends even to the delightfully cheesy labels:

Between every once upon a time and every happily ever after lies a fabled kingdom of art and imagination. Journey to this magical place, together with Disney and UNIQLO, and discover the charming characters, faraway places and treasured artwork of the world’s favorite storytellers. After all, you’re never too old to believe that dreams really do come true.

Love it. Love it all. And I especially love how it’s easier and easier to be a Disney fan and get the news and the fun stuff without actually being able to afford to go to WDW (I don’t love that last bit so much).

To top it all, Ramona started singing along to It’s a Small World today, though she’s loved the song since she was tiny. I actually started crying, to Ash’s amusement.

There are probably people out there who would be absolutely horrified that I was so pleased and proud, but I think I can cope with their disapprobation.

And now, back to our scheduled messages.

I am finding that I’m enjoying the toddler phase quite a lot more than I thought I would, while at the same time finding it terrifying and stressful and exhausting. I just really like being able to get to know Ramona’s personality now that she’s showing it in spades. She keeps me on my toes, bringing up things I thought she’d forgotten or not understood, and thoughtfully repeating back to me what she thinks about it all.

We occasionally find ourselves at loggerheads, but I am determined to make sure to do my sworn duty as a parent and behave like the (literally) bigger person. I won’t let it drag on, I won’t just get tangled up in being a grumpy bugger and I will always be sure to end the day with stories, snuggles and cuddles. The last thing she hears every night that I’m the one to put her to bed is “I love you”, and I tell her about a million times a day, as does Ash. To have her unexpectedly pootle over from her blocks or toys and give a hug and a dazzling smile before announcing “I yuv you!” cuts straight to the heart every time.

Plus, to my completely biased and inexpert mind, the kid is absolutely freakin’ brilliant when it comes to speaking. I do wish I could erase “I want…” from her vocabulary, but with prompting she is aware of the uses of “please” and “thank you”. She gets jokes, such as when I pretended there was a monster behind me and it turned out to be her, and runs around shouting things like “Mummy thought it was a monster but it was you!” (she still generally mixes up “me” and “you”, endearingly). She’s not quite so brilliant with names of relatives she doesn’t see often, but then neither am I. That’s when you get a situation like this:

Ouma, pointing at Auntie Linda: “Ramona, who’s that lady?”
Ramona: “Uncle Bernard.”

Which has a brilliance all its own, frankly.

I’m not sure how I’m going to get my head around having a two year old, but it ought to get all straightened out in my mind by this time next year.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

What constitutes a PR disaster? My perspective on Argyll and Bute

It took just 24 hours for Twitter to catch alight, the ban to be reversed and a proliferation of ‘bad PR’ posts to spring up – most of them packed with good advice, and worth reading, mind. But I can’t help thinking that when we all leap on the latest outrage, we’ve sometimes lost sight of the actual extent of people power through social media. It is tremendously impressive at times, but sometimes, I think, we congratulate ourselves too warmly and too soon.

Is anyone still boycotting Poundland for its allegedly anti-poppy stance? Nestle already had plenty of PR issues – was anyone permanently convinced by the KitKat logo page hijack? Is Habitat finding it impossible to recruit interns and suffering as a result? Or, to put it bluntly: is anyone’s bottom line permanently affected by a social media storm?

That’s a serious question. I’d love to see case studies where people power has permanently changed things long term for a business (aside from the News of the World – the backing of legal wrangling tends to help make your point). I suspect that there are some cases, but also that the biggest, brashest, brightest storms more or less died without a trace, remembered and dredged up mainly by social media pros – like me, in fact.

I wince when I see slow, reactionary and arrogant reputation management because, well, it’s slow, reactionary and arrogant. I think you should fix things – and not act stupidly in the first place, as the council clearly did – because they should be fixed, not solely for economic reasons (although for any business or charity, that is a good reason). But in the end, it would have made no difference to the coffers or workings of Argyll and Bute council if they’d just done nothing and stuck to their daft line. Because they’re a council. Are people going to refuse to pay their council tax? Not buy or rent a house there? Withdraw their kids from Martha’s school? Of course not.

What does worry me is that there might have been a human cost, both for Martha and for people being harangued or treated badly either by fellow council staff or members of the public trying to show their support; I do think this should be a major consideration, because I can’t think what’s more important than people. But, again, it wouldn’t have lasted long.

And, of course, many have shown their marvellously subversive human nature by raising £2,000 while the blog was allowed and active and, at last count, nearly£50,000 in protest. Which is definitely good news for Mary’s Meals.

My point is this: of course spokespeople, PRs and community managers should be responsive, intelligent and, above all, possess some compassion and consideration when dealing with outcries and complaints. They should not get heavy with the ban hammer, or rush out poorly-considered statements. But I also don’t think we should get carried away with declaring crises, disasters or catastrophes. 

I like to think I do my job well, because I consider each and every individual whose issue is sorted out or who feels closer to us as a result of interaction online important – I genuinely care. But I also do my job well because I understand that there’s a bigger picture. Argyll and Bute can’t shrug and say “oh well, we did our best”, because they didn’t, but they can say “oh well”. Now, that’s an important difference (you should always do your best) but it’s not going to have a tremendously different outcome in this case. The great skill of the community manager, one that we all have to work at improving every day, is understanding when to adjust the lens. Argyll and Bute did it embarrassingly late, but their critics didn’t really do it at all.

The other issue is, of course, social media’s role in turning slacktivism (which I think it unfairly denigrated, at least for its short-term effects) into longer term activism. If this has inspired just one person to tackle poor provision at their own council then that’s great.

In the end, the learnings from this, as far as I’m concerned, are pretty much the same as they have been from every other case study of its type:

  • Don’t be stupid
  • When you stop being stupid, everyone will forget about it, and you can get on with things
  • Again, don’t be stupid

Or, I guess, summed up in one more positive assertion: be human, with all that entails.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 22 months

I don’t know what happened, but at some point when I wasn’t looking, someone took away my baby and replaced her with a little girl. There are so many ways to define a very young child as a toddler, and all of a sudden Ramona seems to have hit the classic definition between the eyes.

The most obvious symptom is the fake tantrum. I fill a blue cup with water, and she flattens herself on the floor yelling “Nooo! Nooo! PINK CUP! MILK!” and then pertly looks over her shoulder to check if I’m impressed. She seems genuinely shocked when I say “Ramona, I know you’re not really sad, or crying” and, at the moment, seems to shrug and give up as if to say “well, it was worth a try”. I wonder how long before she starts digging in harder.

She’ll wander about whining “what’s wrong?!” until she gets asked, at which point it becomes evident that, in fact, nothing is. She keeps claiming to be hungry, which is a tricky one because I don’t like to ignore that, but I’m beginning to work out when it’s genuine and when it’s not.

Her memory is formidable. She can narrate the vast majority of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and could do after about the fourth reading. (And the tiger eating all the sandwiches in one big mouthful – OWP! – is the new supper wriggling away in terms of sheer hilarity.) She’s also really into building, which is nice. I get shanghaied into building wooden block “pyramits” more often than not, and then we take turns trying to balance blocks one on top of the other in a tower. If we succeed, it goes something like this:

Ramona: “WE DID IT WE DID IT!”
Me: “Well done, Pickle.”
Ramona: “Is gonna fall over?”
Me: “When you knock it over, yes.”
Ramona: (knocking it over) “It fall over. Oh dear. Try again!”

My mother’s taught her to say “Oh dear, how sad, nevermind” in a dreadful echo of that proud bastion of appallingly offensive sitcoms,  It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. I pretend I can’t hear it.

But the best bit is how brilliantly her singing is coming along. She brings home another song from nursery or a grandparent every week, and then proceeds to mash them all together and, if we’re not quick enough on the uptake, congratulate herself loudly on her, erm, tunefulness. We’ve been playing Laura Veirs’ lovely Tumble Bee* in the car, and today I sang a bit of one of the songs for her at which point she insisted “we can play music now?” and then, when Prairie Lullaby had finished, added “maybe Because, Because, Because now?”, which was her way of requesting Veirs’ lovely version of Woody Guthrie’s Why Oh Why?

That’s worth an Incy-Wincy-Spider-Goodbye-Song-from-Something-Special-Old-MacDonald mashup any day.

*I gotta admit, I did not see myself liking kiddie folk music. I blame Ash entirely.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Snow White and the Huntsman… and her Scary Adventures

It’s been a very Snow White week.

On the 31st of May, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom saw the permanent closure of one of its classics, Snow White’s Scary Adventures. Based on the very first of Walt’s feature-length animated films the ride – which over the years was the subject of the most complaints about Disney to the Unoffficial Guide because of its witch-heavy visuals which saw a tamer reworking in the 90s – is lamented by many Disney fans. Although it remains in its original home at Disneyland, at WDW its footprint will eventually be occupied by a princess-y meet and greet, and there will soon be a very different Snow White themed ride in the form of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train family-friendly coaster.

Personally, I’m really not sorry to see the back of her. I do appreciate the sentiments of those who feel the announcement was not one of Disney’s finest moments, and failed to build momentum and excitement around the coaster to come. I also know some children will inevitably be heartbroken. But Snow White… scared the bejeezus out of me as a four-year-old even though to this day the Haunted Mansion is a beloved favourite; I remember clearly, at my mother’s suggestion, ducking under the safety bar and actually hiding in the front of the cart until Mum told me the coast was clear of deranged old ladies proffering poisoned apples. More to the point, the attraction was crumbling. There’s nothing wrong with the classic ghost-train style dark ride, but it lacked the essential charm of neighbour Peter Pan’s Flight or even the psychedelic lunacy of It’s a Small World (seriously – it’s quite bizarre when you ride it as an adult).  It needed a complete rebuild, or scrapping. What with Fantasyland due a huge renovation, scrapping was the order of the day.

There were some touching moments as I watched the Disney community online lay Snow White to rest – this time without a glass coffin or chance of romantic resurrection. A young boy called Ben, who has an autistic spectrum condition, held SWSA in such esteem that he’d ridden it thousands of times. Reports on Twitter quickly circulated saying that Disney Parks cast members had ensured that he got on the ride with Snow White herself, and that his family were among those on the last ever ride.

As someone who is next to return to WDW (whenever that happens) with a young child, I’m delighted that there is finally a focus on the younger element in Fantasyland, the land that most needed it. It surprises people when I say that Magic Kingdom actually does suffer from a lack of really exciting toddler entertainment – at least, for those of us who can’t pop back there regularly for short visits. Apparently, Disneyland Paris does it very well, and I hope we’ll go back some time not too far away to find out.

In the meantime, I had a rather different Snow White experience by going to see Snow White and the Huntsman. That I unenthusiastically tweeted ‘meh out of ten’ right after seeing it really says a lot about how the film left me feeling.

It wasn’t without its positive elements: the concept was essentially good, as were the attempts to flesh out the characters and give depth to the struggle between the evil queen and her step-daughter beyond a bit of petty jealousy. I actually appreciated the ending for not being entirely obvious, and not just for bringing the overlong story to a close. The visuals, which owed a good deal to Lord of the Rings, were stunning, but felt like a smokescreen to conceal the agonisingly dull performances from both Stewart and Theron. The latter did put her back into it, but the spasmodic changes of tone from cool threatening to incandescent rage merely came across as talking very slowly, as if to a tourist, and then going predictably Basil Fawlty. Chris Hemsworth was fine, but bland; a younger Sean Bean he ain’t.

There were also several cringeworthy moments: at one point, the titular huntsman rips Snow White’s skirts from her in order to stop her impeding their progress through the gnarly woods; she is taken aback, understandably, and he sneers “don’t flatter yourself”. Because, evidently, Snow White should find people ripping her clothes off without asking her a compliment, as indeed is all sexual assault.* Plus, as my sister pointed out, he then left said clothes behind as a clear indication of their progress, thus also being a crap huntsman. Then there was the failure to actually bother to cast anyone of restricted height as a dwarf, instead projecting fairytale dwarfism onto some familiar faces.

It wasn’t unwatchable, and there were some deft moments, but with a bit of life, some judicious editing and a snappier pace, it would have been considerably better. I was left wondering if the production rivalry with the apparently very different Mirror, Mirror (which I haven’t seen), forced Snow White and the Huntsman to take itself too seriously, and ruined the dark romp it could have been.

Still, if anyone wants to have a crack at the dark side of The Little Mermaid, I’m all for it.

*Withering sarcasm, in case it wasn’t obvious.