So, An Article I Wrote Was Published In The Legal Executive Journal...

A couple of months ago, Neil Rose, editor of The Legal Executive Journal, enquired as to whether there were any ILEX (the Institute of Legal Executive) Members on Twitter...I promptly responded as a proud recent Graduate Member of ILEX. It's Rhys Bevan G.Inst.L.Ex, don't you know ;-).

He asked me to write a short article about why I use Twitter...and, of course, I did. I love writing. I love Twitter. I love the law. It was a perfect opportunity for me...

My efforts paid off and my article has been featured in the February issue of the Legal Executive Journal - hurrah!

I'm developing a keen interest in journalism so it was a proud moment to see my article in print...even if they did call me 'Rhys Evans'!

Anyway, my contribution to the article on Social Networking can be found below. Unfortunately, I cannot post a link to the whole article because it's only available online to ILEX Members.

Twitter. A social networking service used by millions of people worldwide to share their thoughts in 140 characters or less. The idea is simple and its simplicity is probably a large factor in its colossal success. The service is used by celebrities and us common folk alike and it is the only place on earth where one can say “I’m following you” without sounding like a stalker.

With, at the time of writing, 3,300 individual tweets, I can certainly claim to be an avid user of the service. The experiences of days out with friends, trips to the cinema, receiving excessively overpriced parking tickets and the effects of suffering from a hangover are mere fiction until I’ve tweeted about them to my 160-something ‘followers’ – who, I have absolutely no doubt, can’t live without knowing every intricate detail of my personal life and inner-most thoughts.

What’s more, Twitter has provided me with the perfect virtual platform upon which I can stand before an invisible audience and shout and scream about my frustrations and anxieties and pretend that people actually care. This has proved to be almost as good a de-stressing technique as a hot bath before bed!

However, apart from tweeting 140-character anecdotes and occasionally making contact with friends and other ‘followers’ using the service, Twitter can be beneficial both to one’s personal interests and professionally.

Twitter leads the way with real-time news feeds. A vast number of news corporations use the service to deliver breaking news and link their followers to new articles within minutes of the event taking place. If a story hasn’t broken out on Twitter within a few hours, it probably isn’t worth reading.

For the legal profession, Twitter has a number of benefits. Practitioners can ‘follow’ firms, legal journalists and lawyers and keep up to date with the law and read reports and legal opinions. The Guardian Law’s Twitter account (@gdnlaw) provides daily legal updates and often publishes important court judgements.

Used wisely, Twitter can also be a great tool for law firms to reach out to new and varied clientele and make use of the free advertising opportunities.

If you haven’t joined Twitter yet, you’re missing out. Not only does Twitter allow us to unashamedly talk about ourselves as often as we like, it also keeps people informed of breaking news and can increase an individual’s awareness of important issues. Twitter engages people and encourages communication and freedom of speech and for this, I applaud the creators.

Admittedly, I struggle to understand how a service like Twitter survives in the commercial world in its current format as there aren’t many obvious features that I can identify as a reliable revenue stream, unlike Facebook. There are few advertisements and the service is free to use. I just hope that, in a bid to start making profit, the creators don’t change Twitter too much and detract from its simplicity.

How long will Twitter last and is it just another fad? We all remember what happened to MySpace. Provided that the creators stick as closely as possible to the original business model, I believe Twitter has longevity and I will certainly continue to enjoy my daily tweets!

Caramel

I'm conscious that recent blogs have detracted from the travel theme that is intended to be prevalent within my 'Nomadic Behaviour' blogsite. However, I have found myself subject to an irresistible desire to share a song with you.

'Caramel' is the tenth track on John Grant's debut solo album, Queen of Denmark.

The song captured me from the moment that I first heard it and I have been playing it on repeat ever since.

'Caramel' is an impossibly stunning love song and John Grant's vocals serve to provide a heightened level of warmth to the already beautiful lyrics and music.

One cannot fail to notice that the lyrics describe John Grant's love of another man. Whilst openly homosexual, Grant achieves something that adds further depth to the song by embracing his homosexuality as opposed to fitting into the convention of heterosexual love songs. Even in the 21st century, such lyrics are still, I believe, a rareity and it's actually very beautiful to hear.

Let me know your thoughts.

I hope you enjoy the song as much as I.

Caramel*

My love is the rarest jewel and he crowns me with his love,

My love, he is rich like caramel and he moves me from above,

He sees me with Tigereye eyes and that's where I make my home,

His heart is a shield which protects me from the vilest foe,

His smile's an elixir which heals the wounds of my darkest years,

When my love is quiet, I consider him and he drives away my fears.

My love, he reveals himself with tenderness and grace,

My love has constructed, with his arms, for me the safest place,

His laughter destroys my doubts and lifts me up so high,

His voice it is soothing like a warm breeze on a summer night,

When he envelops me, I give myself to him and my soul takes flight.

RB x

* John Grant has personally e-mailed me in response to this post (I sent a link to his publicist) and corrected some mistakes in the lyrics. Thus, they've been amended accordingly and are correct as proofread by the artist himself! What an honour!

The James Corden Debacle

The past couple of days have certainly been an interesting experience in my continuing love affair with Twitter.

I perceive myself to be no more than a standard tweeter. I am, genereally, neither overly controversial nor mind-numbingly boring. I tweet about my life in general and occasionally comment on popular culture (a.k.a "what's on the telly")...although, this is far and few between as I tend to make little time to sit down and watch the television (I have better things to do than watch some of the shit that is broadcast to us and often get offended at how unintelligent and simple to please TV producers believe the viewing public are...note "The Magician" on BBC One last weekend!!).

I had 180 followers prior to the 'Cordengate Saga' and I like to think that I've forged some kind of 'online friendship' or 'online acquaintanceship' (in case 'friendship' is taking it a little too far!) with several of the tweeters with whom I have fairly frequent contact.

I don't look up to any celebrities and have little interest in what they're doing. The few celebrities that I have chosen to follow have normally been 'unfollowed' shortly after due to their being rather dull. They're too busy either replying to obsessive fans, promoting new material or ensuring that they don't say anything too controversial so as not to create a media furore or get sued (like the unfortunate Courtney Love). On the whole, 'celebrities' are generally quite boring to follow and I have little interest in celebrity culture.

Instead, I prefer to follow journalists, music-related tweeters (such as Pop Justice, who I find to be constantly interesting and witty to follow) and 'real people' who I believe to lead interesting lives or have similar interests to myself.

On Thursday, I was going about my day as normal and discovered the news that James Corden had signed a contract to host the Brit Awards for the next three years. My immediate reaction was, for whatever reason,...*roll my eyes and cringe*. Thus, commenting on it as anybody else may have done, I tweeted "As if the Brit Awards weren't bad enough, they just got a whole lot worse. I despise James Corden". Nobody commented on what I had said and I proceeded as normal with the remainder of my day - no biggie.

Then, I got an e-mail sent directly to my BlackBerry. Then another. Then another and another and another and another. They were Twitter notifications that I had new followers. Obviously, I was left bemused by my sudden influx of followers. I recall my last tweet had been "Would you rather regret the thing you did or the things you didn't do?"...my initial thought was that somebody must have retweeted it and it caught a few people's attention (we all know how lots of Twitter users have an unusual obsession with thought-provoking or motivational quotes - see the daily Top Tweets as evidence).

I logged onto Twitter, visited my retweets and discovered the truth...James Corden had 'retweeted' my tweet claiming to "despise" him (I didn't even know he was on Twitter).

I won't talk about why he sits searching his name on Twitter and reading through what people think of him - it's all rather self-indulgent or incredibly insecure, I'm not sure which applies in this case. Plus, as a TV personality, you'd surely expect people to either love you or hate you. He claims to be a 'shocked' by it. But, really, I am very cynical about this. If I was in the public eye, I'd be quite clear from the start that some people won't get me. That's a given. Few people can be loved by all. One usually has to die in order to achieve this status.

I suffered a torrent of abuse from his fans for 24 hours. It was hilarious for the first few hours. I was in complete disbelief but it made for a very funny and interesting read. I'm sorry to say it, but people can be incredibly sad and far too involved with celebrity culture - these people need to take a look at their lives and see where it's going wrong. I had a large number of messages simply calling me a "twat" or a "knob". All for what? Having an opinion that they didn't agree with? I was obviously mislead in my belief that England was a modern, democratic society where freedom of thought and free speech were fundamental human rights. I chose not to reply to any of them. I wasn't lowering myself to their levels and I certainly wasn't entering into arguments with people over James Corden. I care too little about him to waste such energy.

Now, for the use of the word "despise". I have a few comments to make on this. "Despise" does appear, in hindsight, to be a little strong. I do not despise James Corden. However, I also refuse to apologise. There's a saying that 'hate is a strong word'. However, this doesn't stop people, including myself, claiming to hate something that, in reality, they just don't like that much. The severity in the use of the word 'hate' has been lost over the years. People do not just use it in order to portray a feeling of extreme and intense emotional dislike, anger or hostility. If somebody claims to 'hate pizza', I doubt they feel overly hostile towards pizza. It is in this very same context that I used the word 'despise'.

How could I possibly actually detest, despise or hate a gentleman that I do not know? I merely do not appreciate him as a TV personality. I believe he was great in Gavin and Stacey (although, I only saw a couple of episodes myself). However, with the few programmes that I have seen him on, I have found him to be (harsh but true) either annoying or arrogant. The last time he presented the BRIT's with Matt Horne and Kylie Minogue, I couldn't continue watching it. He simply does not entertain me and I am entitled to be of that opinion. My dislike of him as a TV personality has absolutely no reflection on him as a person. Unless I knew him, I could never comment on him as a person.

Many of his 'fans' responded to me by stating that I simply shouldn't watch it. But, they missed the point entirely. I won't be watching the BRIT Awards and I was never planning on watching the BRIT Awards. I simply made a flippant comment in passing to my followers, most of whom didn't care less. I didn't direct it at his personal Twitter account and had no knowledge that he was even on Twitter. People claimed I had done it to "make the news" or to "get attention". But, really, when you look at the facts, I think it's quite obvious that I had no idea anybody would read it other than my few followers.

Had James Corden read the comment and simply chosen to ignore it, he wouldn't have created such a fuss. I mean, the response by the media was ridiculous to say the least. Somebody tweeted me to inform me that a news article about the situation which directly quoted my tweet, had been featured as the main headline on yahoo.co.uk and said article had, when I visited it, received 884 comments (many of which were unnecessarily nasty towards James Corden on a personal level)! Why do people care so much!?! It's all a bit too pathetic and laughable.

I would ask why James Corden felt the need to retweet the comment? Was he really that offended? There were far worse things said on Twitter than what I said. Or was it his intention to create some publicity for himself and the BRIT awards? Moreover, perhaps he had a good idea that I would be subject to a torrent of abuse from his fans and condones such behaviour towards people?

Nevertheless, I would also thank him. It's been quite a fun two days... ;-)

Travel Versus A Career

I'm being plagued by the desire to leave my career, escape to new lands, to experience new cultures and to visit the world around me. Coincidentally, Lonely Planet posted a link on Twitter to an article, 'Travel vs Career: does it have to be all or nothing?'. It provoked my thoughts further.

There was a forum where somebody had posted the question 'Who has given up a "career" for a life of travel?'. I found some of the responses to be incredibly profound.

"Who could ever regret spending their life travelling? It's the people who spend all their lives consumed by work and motivated by money, gadgets and possessions who will feel regret."

"Would you rather regret the thing you did or the things you didn't do?"

Food for thought.

RB x

A Lovely Start To The New Year

There were 8 hours until we were to cross over into 2011 and I was driving along the M62 towards the North East. It's a long, boring and monotonous drive - especially when a large section of the motorway is unlit in the evening - and I absolutely always struggle to stay awake on the journey! Thankfully, I was accompanied by three lovely friends who were able to keep me entertained for the duration of the trip.

My New Years' Eve was being spent in Chop Gate, North Yorkshire with my friend and her family, who have recently taken over a Country Pub/Bed and Breakfast called 'The Buck Inn' (shameless plug, but you should definitely visit the website by following this link).

The weekend consisted of great food, great company, laughter, alcohol and trips around the area - including a day trip to Robin Hood's Bay and Whitby on the East Coast and a trip to York.

It was sad to have to return home and, more distressingly, return to work! However, I was glad to have enjoyed such a fantastic and long Christmas break surrounded by my favourite friends and family!

Happy New Year, once again.

Above: A picture that I took at Robin Hood's Bay on the East Coast of Yorkshire.