Jack Monroe #169 Please don’t argue about turnips

[Zelda]

Ooooh, I’m a Member!

 

[Flibbertigibbet]

Funny enough I tore AND I'm one of the rare people who is immune to normal levels of local anesthetic due to an autoimmune condition. I told the woman who was doing my stitches that I need at least double the amount of regular anesthetic and she refused, I genuinely felt every stitch. I wasn't silent though. It was pretty traumatising (on top of a very traumatic pregnancy).
Kind of off topic but I think we have been indoctrinated to think we have to suffer silently through pregnancy and childbirth and the often traumatic aftermath. My mental and physical health has never been the same since but I remember people saying things to me like 'pregnancy isn't an illness' or 'you're pregnant, not sick' & 'mavis had the same condition as you but already has ten kids to look after and she just got on with it' .
Women like Jack bragging about silent thirty hour labours are really not helpful for people who wonder why their experiences were so horrible in comparison to the majority.

Soz, she's making me feel quite ranty today

I'll be honest - I never had the urge to have children, but the whole sanctimommy thing, and people saying "you're doing it all wrong" while you're already demented with stress only sealed the deal. Big respect for all the mother fraus.

 

[LavaFlake]

Fuzzybut? It's a bee you absolute cuntfuck.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

Who was it yesterday who was asking about her book sales? I have a very trustworthy source in the publishing world who sent me this overnight:

View attachment 495184

This is amazing, thank you! Jack maths:
* she claims to get 17p per sale, so £528
* some literary agent site claims it’s 10-15%, so that would be £1.9k - £2.8k

Either way, lol.

 

[Silver Linings]

 

[bowiethesdmn]

Just got off my call, have been stuck on the waiting list to see an ADHD specialist. Must have thanked the nurse a million times and am on the verge of tears of joy/relief. Fuck me I might be able to start my adult life properly.

Genuinely, how does she use stuff like this as a personality trait? People who do it with OCD enrage me too, though I think there's less dialogue about how disabling that can be.

 

[Mr Krabs]

Probably just a rumour but don’t recipe writers write a whole load of gumpf about the dish and how it reminds them of one summer they spent in Tuscany with their granny massaging tomatoes with olive oil etc as it keeps people on their page longer so adverts and pop up ads create more income for them?

That's true. Also, there's a misconception that the longer you spend on a page, the higher Google will rank it. But most people will just nope out of there upon seeing a wall of text, so it can actually be bad for your numbers. As a PP said, there was a tool to remove all the gumpf and it pissed off a load of bloggers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56241653

I hate to say it, but what Jack fails to realise about Nigella's style, and why it's so hard to ape, is that Nigella is really fucking smart. She was privately educated, went to Oxford etc. She isn't just chucking in random 'clever person words'. You can't fake that kind of eccentric intelligence.

Jack is basically Joey from Friends when he learns to use the thesaurus.

 

[blurstoftimes]

6. Actor, Ruby Rose’s body double.

7. Lawyer. Because when she said that her lawyer was reading Tattle, it was actually her reading tattle. That makes her a lawyer, right?

 

[MancBee]

1 YouTuber, she has put one or two videos on YouTube
2 Blogger, she did that back in the poverty years
3 Singer, dueted with the greats dontcha know
4 TV Presenter, enough said
5 Writer, see above

So fair enough, half of them, done half heartedly.

 

[Alansbigplate]

I only just got the hyacinths in a bucket thing

 

[Veronicaaa]

It's finished! Jack managed to move herself to tears through the power of her own words! It was very dramatic! There was a long, uncomfortable pause as she took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes after saying something along the lines of 120,000 disabled people have died directly due to cuts (missed the timeframe in which this was meant to have happened, though I wouldn't be surprised it she'd said it was in the past year. No sources cited).

 

[EllaEm87]

Here's the long version on her blog:

Heart attacks, nut burgers, school places and politics.

Hi all. I know it's been a long time since I wrote on my blog. Some of my regular readers will have noticed I moved back to Southend in the summer, and have been adjusting to life outside of London...

web.archive.org

"""""""suspected heart attack"""""" apparently.

Spoiler: it was not a heart attack.

They are quite easy to diagnose Jack. We do an ECG and check your blood for elevated troponin. Bingo! Myocardial Infarction!
Also... that troponin lingers for a while so there’s not really any suspected about it, it either happened or it didn’t.

 

[Mr Krabs]

There are many factors to her decline - no clear brand, prickly personality, endless drama, terrible TV presence and, above all, shit food.

But it's also worth looking at how her style of recipe writing has evolved.

This is from her early days at the Guardian:

View attachment 495517

...and this is from her blog now:

View attachment 495518

I apologise for the screenshot there - Jack's website is not optimised for mobile. But I think the problem is clear. She thinks of herself as a Writer with a capital W. She really, really isn't one. The result? Recipes that are essentially unreadable, as well as inedible.

Without myself too much, my career involves a lot of writing and editing content. I often hire junior writers, fresh out of English or Journalism degrees, and gawd, their work is a lot like Jack's terrible Nigella impersonation. Also, a LOT of ridiculous flowery words, with no thought to the reader.I often have to remind people that fewer words are often better. They aren't writing a uni essay. Stop filling the page with bollocks to fill your word count.

Jack's brand is that she writes for people with little time or money, free copies to foodbanks etc. So why include cutesy anecdotes about your son? A lot of her writing is about her lazily making breakfast blah blah. That's completely off brand for people who are working six days a week on minimum wage. The original recipe style was actually fine and the sort of thing you could follow with little cooking experience.

I think she's also trying to copy the styles of these recipe blogs who absolutely babble on for an eternity about their trips to Italy or their grandma's kitchen, because they think it's good for SEO. That only really works if the page has useful information -- i.e. different cooking methods, wine pairings, freezing instructions or whatever. If people arrive at that wall of text they're going to immediately click back, which is going to tank your Google ranking.

Oh shit, look at all that crap I just wrote. I've caught Jackitis.

 

[Satisfying Click]

She's was a ballerina as well? Alongside the regional chess player, diagnosis gifted scalpel thief?

 

[Veronicaaa]

Well, I've ordered a ticket for the Ted thing tonight. Whether I'm feeling sufficiently masochistic come 7pm remains to be seen.

 

[Emmapism]

I was an extra in one of the Da Vinci code movies so I can attest to how hard you have to work to be moderately successful as an actor.

 

[MancBee]

I'm going to watch this again:

She said in that interview that some other "better people had electric hobs". But she then goes on to say that she is "diametrically opposed to electric hobs".

So she is saying that she is the exact opposite to an electric hob. She really doesn't understand long words, does she?

As an aside, living in a tower block (I know, common as muck) we only have electric available for cooking. Some people don't have the privilege to chose, Jack.

 

[Pocahontas]

How the hecking heck can she see down there when lying on her back? It wouldn't be physically possible to see your own cesarean surely. I've seen my sisters scar, it is on the lower part of her belly. The baby bump would get in the way wouldn't it? Does she have an overly long neck?

Come, come, my dear Manc - don’t forget who we are talking about here! She is medical marvel Jack Monroe. If she can bench press her own weight, carry a sofa home, stand on her tiptoes for 11 mins, move various heavy items of furniture, row 20 kms and walk 20,000 steps a day she can for damn sure sit up while in the middle of having her abdomen operated on to forensically eyeball the birth of her son. Probably with no pain meds at that point as well.

Sheesh.

 

[MancBee]

Thing is that for some Autistic people, people facing jobs are marvellous. Sometimes they just enjoy it (because not everybody with Autism is unable to talk to people) and sometimes because it gives a framework, a way/script of responding, a way of learning to engage with and understand people - not to 'mask' but to learn.

I think working with people has been the best thing ever for me. I wouldn't have learned any of it had I been able to hide behind a label and never do anything that didn't feel 100% safe. And Mr D thrives when he's in roles with people - put him out back where he doesn't have to speak to anybody and he'll lose speech from not using it daily, and dealing with conflict/angry people at work means things that would be incredibly stressful for him elsewhere become minor irritations.

I have no direct experience of anyone with Autism, but the way Jack makes out, all Autistic people are the same. You, and others on this forum are so informative and I have learned so much. Autistic people are not one homogenous group, it is evident from you Fraus that have disclosed your diagnoses. Jack does exactly as you say, hides behind a label. Actually she hides behind many, many labels.

 

[Rekyavikgirl]

Why silently? Why is that a point unless you are trying to be better than people who make noises when in labour?

Don't forget that she silently ripped a radiator from the wall whilst in labour.