Grumpy Young Women The Blog was founded in November 2009 by writer Maddie York, who had grown rather tired of blogging grumpily all by herself and wanted to make the point that modern life is just as irksome for women in their twenties and thirties as it is for the old girls. She put out a call to arms and, to her joy, several witty, cynical, no-nonsense young women stepped forward to join her in putting the world to rights.
EDITORS
MADDIE, 25, is a writer and editor. She feels strongly about good manners and grammar, and enjoys having a nice sit-down in front of the television with a gin and tonic.
Maddie is sort of electromagnetically sensitive to grammar misuse
– and she considers it her civic duty to correct signs and menus etc. with the very sharp pencil she carries in her handbag at all times.
Visit Maddie’s website.
ROSIE, 28, is a freelance writer. She writes about her great passions: food, all things domestic, and contemporary etiquette.
Rosie loves cooking, anything with polka dots on, vintage hair and complaining over a glass of wine. Routinely disappointed by the death of modern manners, she hopes that her writing will encourage others to be a little kinder to their fellow man – and woman.
Visit Rosie’s website.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
SHERMAINE, 31, is a freelance writer and sometime model. She worked in various offices after completing her degree but was let off early for good behaviour. Addicted to tea, berries, meat and all forms of media, Shermaine loves working out, reading and eating and dislikes cats, football, beetroot and authority.
Visit Shermaine’s website.
SHELLY, 30, lives in London and works with offenders (that is, trying to reduce their offending, not as their accomplice); but she hopes to make money doing something more creative in the future. Likes include good food and drink, a good book, glossy magazines and making stuff.
Shelly is irritated by ignorant people, rude people, obnoxious people, and places where there are too many people.
Visit Shelly’s blog.
NAOMI, 26, lives and works in Oxford. When not ranting at contestants on University Challenge, she can be found reading a book in various tea establishments. Her obsessions range from early 20th century literature to peacock feathers and anything that sparkles. The things that really make her grumpy are bad manners, spelling mistakes and people who spit in the street.
Naomi also blogs at
Bloomsbury Bell and
The Lady.
ROSIE, 24, enjoys reading, procrastinating, daydreaming to Bachata music, and Scrabble. Her pet peeves include people who can’t distinguish between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. In Russian she can say ‘I’m English’, ‘I’m hungry’, and ‘Is it possible there it is?’ Her dream is to return to Moscow (where she lived for a year), and have an actual conversation with that woman in the metro booth.
MARTHA, 28, was once described by a family acquaintance as the most cynical person he’d ever met;
Martha endeavours to uphold this standard to this day. To list all of her irritations would take more space than she is allowed here, but they can safely be summarised as: people. She harbours a keen interest in loud and unpleasant music, needlecrafts, homoerotic fan fiction, and younger men in sharp suits.
JUDY, 25, is a blogger, writer and online editor living and working in London. She has a tendency to rant about pretty much everything, suffering from the inability to keep her thoughts to herself on anything from bad manners to the latest storylines in
EastEnders. She’s happiest when wearing a dress and sipping a cocktail or wearing pyjamas and sipping tea; in between the two she can be found writing over on her
website and blog or
tweeting into the early hours.
LAURA, 25, loves whisky and is a tenacious daydreamer. Things that make her grumpy are unruly and loud children, smokers and people who judge others based on their looks.
Laura sees no excuse for bad manners and will often go out of her way to annoy rude people by being as polite and friendly as possible.
Visit Laura’s blog.
KATE, 23, is an East London-dwelling yoga bunny. Full time she works in procurement and keeps that balanced with another type of buying: working as a freelance stylist. An opportunistic Northerner,
Kate frequently breaks the rules by chatting with strangers on public transport and changes her hair colour far too often. She relishes old-fashioned face-to-face conversation, Radio 4 and lip balm.
SELINA, 24, is a human rights advocate and freelance writer who is thankful for the fact that people cannot hear the quirky and dark internal monologue inside her head. Aside from using major social resources to create the façade of being a semi-normal human being, she also spends a lot of time trying not to flick the foreheads of the presumptuous and quiffy toffs who call her ‘northern monkey’.
Visit Selina’s blog.
ALICE, 27, likes wearing welly boots that make her walk like a farmer and drinking red wine out of a small glass. Monday to Friday sees her drowning under a deluge of UCAS applications while trying not to stab herself in the eye with a fork to cure the boredom. At night,
Alice is ploughing her way through editing her first novel and exploring the murky depths of online dating with varied success.
SAM, 25, is yet another hapless underachiever and/or pointless media graduate. She gets her thrills editing twisty lit mag
Spilt Milk. Her other wares are whored out on
shufflemumblescream.co.uk. She is fond of beetroot, tower blocks and Budapest.
CHESS, 24, works in everybody’s dream job: HR. Nothing makes her happier than animal print, eating, interesting neon signage and wearing pyjamas. Sources of vexation are numerous, although finding toast crumbs in the butter features high on the list.
BEA, 25, has, for many years, been afflicted with chronic bouts of grumpy ranting exacerbated by injustice, noise in the quiet carriage and the mere thought of Katie Melua. Things that make Bea happy(er) include; gin, friends, The League of Gentlemen and balloons.
Visit Bea’s website.
