I was shocked to discover that an article about me was on the Daily Mail website! I was informed of this by my friend Ceri at work. Initial thoughts were those of "oh my God, I didn't know this was happening yet" mixed with those of excitement, but then I saw the comments made by readers of the Daily Mail at the bottom of the article. At the time, there were only negative comments which were really quite hurtful. That was something I didn't expect from all of this, online publishing with the ability for readers to post comments. After an afternoon of being in complete shock and complete upset, followed by a night of getting absolutely trollied in order to try to forget the day I'd had, it sank in what had happened and I became ok with it. The online publishing occurred through a misunderstanding and the people making negative and derogatory comments, well they can just bite me! I don't even have the time of day to go into that here, they're just small-minded idiots, 'nuff said.
I felt a little bit famous for a while there! People were posting on my Facebook page with stories I didn't even know were published and people were sending texts telling me I was in actual newspapers as well as online. I have to tell you though, I feel so sorry for celebrities. I had one tiny, microscopic snippet of what they have to deal with and it was insane! The exaggeration and sheer bullshit, which I will henceforth refer to as "artistic license", of the press is mind boggling! In my interview with Natasha I told her I'd spent about £8k on my collection and just insured them for £10k so naturally the press decided this was actually £20k and published that overinflated figure instead. They also referred to Joe, my husband (though they said he was my boyfriend) as "long-suffering" and said that I'd "persuaded" him to buy me ponies as gifts. Talk about sensationalising it! Joe said nothing of the sort, he's very supportive of my hobby and the gifts were definitely voluntary. The Sun also stuck their oar in with what does seem quite a negative piece, with many inaccuracies.
Well, I did feel the need to right a few wrongs there but I'll consider that done now and get back to the good stuff. I've had an offer from a magazine for my article and am awaiting the contracts to come through. It's all very exciting and back on track to what this should have been to begin with. Though I have to say, now the dust has settled even the newspaper stuff is fun! Watch this space for magazine scans and in the meantime, here are a couple of links to the online stories...
On a slight side-note, the photos were so much fun to do. Joe and I spent an afternoon taking them and had a blast! The best ones aren't shown in the articles. Under the big pile of ponies in the articles is... me! We took various shots of just my head poking out, then my arms, then the various stages of me trying to get up. They're really funny and they should have used some of those in the papers I think; it would have shown more of a sense of humour about all of this than the papers have shown. Initially I pictured the article, very tongue-in-cheek, with our amusing snapshots in publications like 'Women's Own', alongside such revelations as "Woman gives birth to three-headed alien". In other words, a bit of a laugh. The best of the photos show that. I would love to post them but magazines can get "a bit funny" about that when they're planning to use them, apparently, so I shall wait patiently and post them after they've published their piece.
