Jack Monroe #52 Am I awful and nobody has ever told me?

[heretoreaditall2019]

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how many of those are cotswold co marketing emails tho...

 

[People-huv-tae-know]

It has taken me this long to realise that Jack has muddied the waters a little with her trademarked name Cooking on a Bootstrap. Whether on purpose or not who knows?
I have done a little preliminary research and the original phrase is of course 'cooking on or living on a shoestring' which as the name suggests means living on a very limited or restricted budget. Of course 'on a shoestring' might be copyrighted already.
Bootstrap comes from what is now a much more loaded phrase (pull oneself up by one's bootstraps) that has racist connotations these days. 'Anything is possible if you just pull yourself together' ignoring any class, race, social movement, education, financial or elitist restrictions which ensure that poor, working class and BAME people remain at the bottom of the pile.
Interestingly the bootstrap phrase originates in 1834 and referred to a person attempting an impossible task (like making Jack's food look edible) and was in turn inspired by an incident in the fantasy fiction book The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchhausen by Rudolf Raspe (1781). The eponymous hero pulls himself and his horse of a swamp by pulling himself up by his hair. Of course it is ludicrous and suggests the impossible (again see Jack's cooking).
It took less than 10 minutes for me to discover this and I find it intriguing that Jack either does not know or care about how offensive the bootstrap reference can be.
Also the concept is alien to her, she landed on her feet and has been happily using the system to get ahead ever since. No pulling of bootstraps by Jack, not even the pulling of a pair of £180 trainer laces got her where she is today. Her class, her ethnicity, the people she knows haven't prevented her success, one might even say it all helped....

 

[LennyBriscoe]

She's acting as though she spent an idyllic childhood in Cyprus before she was dramatically exiled to Southend. Double mention of lemons fresh from the tree too, interesting for someone so invested in not actually ever cooking with them.

OH FOR GOD SAKE!!!!!!

If your family have food and conviviality around a table in Cyprus then they can have it round a table in Southend!!!!! You can’t do anything about that now. Recreate it in your lovely shitty bungalow, get your friends round and get a food shop in make them some meze. Take charge.

@Flumps there’s something in the air today! She’s making me angry and I don’t normally feel like that about her. Once Mr Lenny comes back we’re going to take SB out somewhere. I shall not be wearing trainers but will (yes) absolutely be avoiding lakes.

 

[FrumpyCat]

JM acting as if she's such a massive fan of Taylor Swift - seems odd she's only just recently started following her, on both Twitter and Instagram. You can tell as TS is almost at the very top of her 'following' list.

didn't TayTay record 'We are never ever getting back together'. One for Louisa's playlist.

 

[LennyBriscoe]

Over on Facebook.

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“After I’ve been to the shop?” #saltylenny

 

[AdultHumanFemale]

thanks @spirals and a cyber hug thrown your way x
Agree with this 100% i always see snarkiness and sarcasm in almost every kind of written message. Text/email/posts. It's because everything ever said/done by my NM was meant to be cruel so it's taken the past 20 years to unlearn. Most daughters of NM are hardwired like this (and it is overwhelmingly Mothers to daughters, although other Narc parent/child relationships occur) It is why i don't understand practical jokes or a lot of banter. It doesn't compute that these things are meant to be good natured or funny. I spent over half of my life only hearing bad things about myself.
I'm lucky in that friends and colleagues are aware and are quite kind. I have no contact with pretty much my entire birth family, which is common in survivors of Narc abuse. Also common is the skill of picking up on Narc traits in people. Its a survival skill due to my ptsd.

I usually lurk, and like things on here at the moment, but just dipping in again to say that @MooBelle I relate to this so much. Your words actually made me realise that I have a very similar reaction to jokes/banter. I am very literal, and find banter within a larger social dynamic (work, or a group of friends) really difficult to navigate and understand. But as you said, when you spend a large proportion of your life (and all of those fundamental years) hearing bad, and even terrible things about yourself as well as watching and pre-selecting every word or action you do, it's really fucking hard to undo that. I just don't think I'd ever really correlated this aspect of my personality/behaviour to my relationship with my mother.

Also, I've just hit my one year anniversary of cutting off complete contact to her (she still sends me drunken texts though...), and I can honestly say my life whilst not perfect, is infinitely better without her in it.

Anyway, this was all just a long ramble to say thanks @MooBelle for sharing.

 

[Ellabella]

The way she's going on about her Greek identity, the phrase "misty-eyed rhetoric" comes to mind for some reason...

 

[TheDragonWithAFlagon]

Trying to game the analytics/engagement figures? Can't see how shit the tweets are if they aren't there when a prospective commissioning executive wants to know the numbers and see whether there's any risk involved in hiring somebody? The editor bod said 'Delete. It. All.'? SB's Dad has said 'take that shit off before I use it to support and application for sole residency and supervised contact only'?

As if none of those wouldn't set alarm bells ringing.




In other news, I'm rather enjoying listening to somebody's sound system being seized right now. Serves them right for sticking it on a balcony and playing shit house music at earbleeding SPL on repeated accasions. Especially when they're eight weeks into an introductory tenancy. It's gone from the walls shaking to 'No, you cannot stop us, please step back.'.

Ha ha ha.

 

[Marj24]

I'm on an early morning ramble but as someone who lived just a few years ago on soup and toast and fruit and yoghurt because I could barely get myself out of bed and only ate when my stomach was really gnawing i thought I would share what I did when I found a little more energy that just opening a tin of ready prepared soup.

Tesco do a tin of mixed beans in spicy sauce. I tipped that into a saucepan with the same amount of water that filled the tin. Added a pinch of cumin and chilli flakes and a tsp of veg stock powder. While that was warming i would crumble a few tortilla chips on a plate and top with some (pre) grated cheese and microwave for 60 seconds. After which I would need to separate the chips with a couple of forks to stop it being just one lump.

Once the bean soup was hot, if I had it I would add fresh coriander or a good pinch of frozen from the freezer.

I put half the cheesy tortillas in a bowl, added the soup, rest of the tortillas on top.

Followed by tinned/frozen or fresh fruit and Greek yogurt.

I'm still here (thankfully) x

 

[Begborrowsteal]

Jackanory, Melissa's a Tory.

Thread title right there

 

[Bookweevil]

Why is she still blaming literally anything on being (undiagnosed) autistic or ADHD?

Jack

“I spilled a drink because I’m autistic”
“I made horse spunk because I’ve got ADHD”
“I have 90 billion emails because of ADHD”
“I’m fangirling Taylor Swift because my ex will hopefully read this and come running back when I say the lyrics are just like us because I’m autistic”

It’s absolutely vile to people who genuinely suffer from these things.

I totally agree. I have OCD - not the David Beckham ‘I like the fridge to be tidy’ version, but (*risk of sounding like Jack alert*) fully blown, life-ruining compulsive behaviour that was completely out of control in my teens and early 20s. I’m ok now as I’ve had CBD which is the NUTS for OCD (highly recommend if any fellow fraus also suffer with this). I was talking to my therapist the other day and mentioned the cause of an eating issue I was having as being down to ‘my OCD brain’. She stopped me immediately and asked me to take out the OCD brain idea from my thinking - that maybe my behaviour was indeed down to having OCD, maybe it wasn’t - that for our purposes it wasn’t relevant for exploring the problem and what I was going to do to sort it out. She wasn't dismissing the OCD factor, but one thing I love about her is that she totally discourages me trying to give myself any labels - whether that’s OCD or criticisms about myself - and has always encouraged me to think about myself as a person, not a condition. I’ve found it surprisingly healthy and freeing as it makes me feel I can change and improve.

I realise, of course, that the conditions and challenges people have are all different and that approach of setting it aside isn’t applicable in every case, but I do wish JM would stop constantly defining herself like this and using conditions as excuses.

Oh, and I’m 39 and shoe size 40

 

[Marmalade Atkins]

Spotted a random kettlebell by the chair

Just why?!

The kettlebell is holding the CD/book shelf in place to stop it tipping over.



The Patreon stuff is terrible. I think the fact she hasn't posted on it since 2018, and the 4 postcards a month thing, just about proves everyone is paying the lowest tier. No way is she sending out cards every month. We'd know if she was.

And there's absolutely no doubt *some* of the people giving her money for FUCK ALL every month have actually forgotten they're doing it.

And yes, Jack, they are all Pity Patreons. Stop taking advantage of those people. Close your Patreon and go and clean your very expensive Smeg fridge.

 

[instacharlie]

Then the icing on the cake View attachment 191844View attachment 191845This is just , I can’t believe she still has this up there!!!
Plus the most recent update on the site is from April 2018 She sure seems to take her Patreon followers for granted. She has over 190 current members

This just makes me feel sick. Why not just urge people to donate to food banks and charities direct? I just couldn't do it.

 

[blurstoftimes]

Guys we’ve gone so off topic that jack has shaved the rats tail off her head

 

[Cookiecookie]

Then the icing on the cake View attachment 191844View attachment 191845This is just , I can’t believe she still has this up there!!!
Plus the most recent update on the site is from April 2018 She sure seems to take her Patreon followers for granted. She has over 190 current members

That is nothing but pure piss taking. Even at the most basic $4x190, you're looking at $760 per month, which is about £594. Poor my fucking bollocks. Lying, horrible bitch

 

[DinosaurSenior]

This is my current inbox. It gives me no concern whatsoever. I probably won't ever deal with it.

 

[Shesaidwhat?]

See you tomorrow

 

[Passive_Aggressive_Lemon]

Her feed now looks like you’d expect of a minor celeb tv cook. Do you think she’s taken Tattle advice to be more professional and split business and personal up?

 

[ChickenPorridge]

Is she saying....what I think she’s saying??

I get that she's having a bad time of it, really do. Everything has kind of happened all at once for her lately, the DKL stuff etc, discovering the cabal, the breakup. It's shitty, course it is. Nobody wants her to suffer or come to any harm at all. You open yourself up to critics when you display yourself on social media to thousands, claim endless ailments and tell tales constantly, it's to be expected. The part that sticks in her craw is that Tattle keeps receipts. Her stories are littered with inconsistencies and exaggerations to say the least. She wants to carry on oversharing and faux-advocating for the underdogs, pulling the wool over people's eyes and selling books, starting Twitter pile ons in the name of calling out injustices.

To me it looks like she's royally throwing all the toys out of the pram and is down sulking on a park bench, alluding to jumping in a lake that only comes to the shins. (And posting it to Insta). Imagine how worrying and triggering that could be to one of regular little 'Be Kind' followers!

 

[MancBee]

This was deleted within a minute. Why does she bother?