#23.7.2024

[louisupdates]

INTERVIEW: Lottie Tomlinson: we lost our mum and sister. Louis saved me

At the age of 20, the sister of One Direction singer Louis had already lost her mother, Johannah, and sister Félicité. Now 25, the social media star has written a book about how they coped

Alice Thomson | Tuesday July 23 2024, 5.00pm BST, The Times

Losing Mum was so hard. I was only a teenager but at least I knew that her death was a possibility, even though she didn’t accept it. She was 47 and had cancer. But when my sister died three years later, I was on this hotel balcony in Bali and I was screaming, ‘No, my baby sister, no.’ The pain was indescribable. I kept thinking, ‘Why me? This can’t be happening again. When is this going to end?’ ”

We are sitting on Lottie Tomlinson’s immaculate white sofa in her pristine white house in Chislehurst, southeast London, where she is curled up in tiny shorts with a perfect tan and impeccably applied make-up. But her French manicured nails are digging so hard into the sofa I think they might snap, the heart tattoo on her minuscule wrist is throbbing and her eyelashes are clogged with tears.

Her life sounds blessed. The influencer has 4.8 million Instagram followers waiting for her to dispense advice on how to apply mascara; the fake tan brand, Tanologist, that she launched at 19 has gone global; and she has a devoted fiancé, Lewis Burton, who runs a luxury concierge business and whose former girlfriend was the late Caroline Flack. They have an adorable son called Lucky, who is dripping ice cream on her marble counters. Her new book is also called Lucky Girl; her older brother is Louis Tomlinson of One Direction and she was touring the world with the band as a make-up artist at 16.

But after her mother died when she was 18, Tomlinson was left looking after her younger sister and two sets of twin siblings, aged eight and two, while creating her businesses, and trying to process her grief. Her father had left their home in Doncaster years before after a battle with alcohol. “Dad had a drinking problem. We’d see glimpses of his good side but he let us down,” she says. “I ended up trying to take care of him rather than the other way round.”

When her mother died, life felt bleak, “I lost the one person who loved me unconditionally, and then when my sister Fizz [Félicité] died of an accidental overdose, I thought I could never be happy again,” she says. “I found the lead-up to Mother’s Day devastating without my sister as well. It was a constant reminder that I was now different from my friends. In my dreams, my mum was still there; she was alive. I woke up feeling comforted, only to realise that she’d gone.”

Tomlinson, who is now 25 and a patron of the bereavement charity Sue Ryder, moves easily between telling you how to apply the best tan and how to talk about death. She cares passionately about both subjects and takes them equally seriously, worried that I’ve never tried a bronzer or used foundation before asking how I coped when my mother died during the pandemic. Her soft Yorkshire accent is both reassuring and no-nonsense.

Born near Doncaster, she was only two when Fizz was born and six when the first twins arrived. “I’ve always been the big sister — Fizz and I each got one and then more twins six years later.” While Louis had his own space, the girls all shared one room with bunk beds. “It was chaos, but my mum, Johannah, was a midwife and loved being pregnant and having so many babies,” she explains. “I used to be in awe of the way she could feed the twins at once, one on each hip. She would do the night shifts, while I held the fort at home.”

Within a few years, Tomlinson would be touring America, Asia and Europe, flying first class with Louis, part of the biggest boy band in the world, but until she was 15, the family had only ever gone to France once a year all packed into a seven-seater car, with her mother’s new partner, snacks laid out in the middle. They stayed in a caravan park. On a Sunday, a treat was to go to their mother’s hospital to see the babies.

While Louis just wanted to sing, play the guitar and listen to Oasis, the girls were obsessed with make-up. “From the age of 12, I struggled academically, but I loved cropped clothes and my mum’s highlighters and mascaras.” She learnt how to apply everything from YouTube tutorials, rather than doing algebra. “We didn’t have much money — we sometimes couldn’t afford to top up the electricity meter so used candles — but everything my mum earned she spent on us. We all looked immaculate — I remember her being horrified when I dyed my hair orange. So it was lovely later when we could treat her.”

Saturday nights were spent watching The X Factor. “My mother and brother kept applying; in 2010, he got in and the whole family went for the audition. We believed in him, but we never thought it would go that far.” One day the family were going to the live shows, the next the boy band was formed with Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Liam Payne. “He was 18. For my mum it was a big shock. It was all so sudden. The press and fans were in our front garden every day.”

The older twins had already made their first TV appearances — they sound like Doncaster’s Von Trapps. “My mother was gently pushy,” Tomlinson says, smiling at the thought. “When I didn’t get good enough GCSEs to stay at school, she sent me off to join Louis on tour as work experience. I was so scared. I remember her ringing up Lou [Teasdale], their hair and make-up artist, and saying, ‘Lottie has not got through to sixth form; she’s going to come and assist you.’ I was in the car going, ‘No, please don’t.’ But it ended up being the best thing that happened to me. I went for a week and stayed two years. Lou and I are still so close.”

Suddenly, the two eldest Tomlinson children were circling the world, eating room service and ducking the paparazzi hanging out of helicopters taking snaps. “At first Louis didn’t really want his little sister gate crashing his new rock-star life, but now it feels like the best time of our lives — we experienced that craziness together,” she says.

The teenage Tomlinson found it harder to cope with being photographed wherever she went. “I had some puppy fat which made me very self-aware, and the filler culture was coming in and I felt I had to look perfect.” She had her lips done first at 17. “Then I became addicted: cheek filler, jaw filler, more make-up, blonder hair, slimmer and more tanned. My mum thought I looked perfect, but I was always searching.”

Five years later, when she became pregnant with Lucky and her lips started to swell and crack, she realised she didn’t need the enhancements any more. “I had everything removed, the false eyelashes too. It was liberating.” She kept her boob job, however. “That was just enhancement,” she says laughing. “The rest radically changed the way I looked. My breasts also got huge when I was pregnant and it was a bit painful. But I still breastfed. I loved carrying my child. I felt fantastic even when I was sick and exhausted.”

She leans forward, wraps her bronzed arms around her stomach and whispers, “I am pregnant again. We don’t know yet if it’s a boy or girl. It’s only 13 weeks, so this is the first time I’ve said it publicly. I think I want a big family. I loved having Lucky but after a year I wanted to give him siblings.”

Tomlinson’s influencer career began once she established herself on tour. Soon everything she did, even dying her roots rainbow-coloured, went viral and fashion companies from Asos to Dior wanted in on it. “I was just going for it. I couldn’t believe the money I was making and spending — money I didn’t know existed as a child.”

Then suddenly her mum came home from holiday with flu. “She didn’t want to get out of bed. The doctors quite quickly told her she had leukaemia and she went straight to London for treatment. It all happened so fast. I remember being in London at work and getting a call from her partner — she couldn’t say the words herself, it was too hard for her.” The family were told it was treatable. “We kept so much hope.”

Her mother asked the family to keep her illness secret. “It was hard because you feel so isolated, but I understood. Louis was in the public eye and she didn’t want him questioned. She was determined to fight it and didn’t want everyone pitying her. My friends noticed I was acting differently for a few months. But I wanted to respect her wishes. It was her one request.”

She also dropped everything to go back to Doncaster to help her grandparents with the twins. “The younger ones were two and I wanted to keep everything as normal as possible. I can’t imagine what my mum was feeling leaving her kids to go to hospital.

“I would take them down and treasure seeing her — we tried to keep it light, no serious conversation. The only way Mum could cope was to keep it normal. Then, when the doctors said the transfusions hadn’t worked, she came home to die.”

Tomlinson tries to sound matter-of-fact. “We went to see her in hospital in Sheffield and the next morning we woke up and were told she had died. We felt numb. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Now I am involved with the Sue Ryder charity, I am surprised we were offered no support or counselling at all, from the GP, the teachers, the professionals. They all kept away.” Her nan and grandad picked up the pieces.

It’s not surprising she can’t remember the funeral. “I just remember getting really drunk to numb the pain. I couldn’t come to terms with it. I can’t even remember how we organised it. My instinct was to take over as the eldest girl and step into my mum’s shoes so that is what I did.” Meanwhile, her older brother, who was launching his solo career, ensured there was enough money. “He’s incredibly generous. We looked after each other.”

Tomlinson returned to London months later, after her grandmother said she needed to become a role model for her siblings. Her younger sister Fizz worried her most. “She was very academic — she got straight A’s without trying — but she always said she felt different. She was bottling her grief for so long; it was too much and made her turn to other things. I think Mum’s death destroyed her. Only my mum seemed to understand her. If she had been offered some help at the start, things might have been different.”

Meanwhile, Tomlinson’s self-tanning brand was soon being sold in Los Angeles, New York and Australia, while her own fanbase grew; she hardly ever needed to pay for drinks, meals or holidays. However, she finds the term influencer obnoxious. “I don’t want to act like I tell people what to do. I am more of a content creator,” she explains. “I get paid by brands to create content for their clothes or beauty products and promote that to my followers. I also wanted my own business. I was quite aware that, at the end of the day, I was just working with an app. That’s why I started Tanologist with my business partner. I was always using tanning treatments that would end up turning my sheets orange and my face would break out in spots — this is more natural.”

Louis was also forging his career as a solo artist, eventually creating the song Two of Us about his mother’s death. “We were always so proud of Louis and what he was doing. We were not going to match up to being a global superstar, but we didn’t want to — ‘successful’ looks different for everyone,” she says.

But her sister Fizz was slipping and struggling. “She was old enough to do what she wanted at 19; she was partying and taking stuff to numb everything. She did go into rehab but to me it didn’t feel like an addiction problem, but a way to blank out her grief.” When Tomlinson was invited to Bali, she asked Fizz whether she wanted her to stay behind. “She said she was OK, and then it happened while I was away,” she says. (Fizz accidentally overdosed on cocaine, an anxiety drug and painkillers, her inquest found.) “Louis called me…” She stops talking.

The shock of a second death must have been devastating. She doesn’t speak for a minute while she twists her huge diamond engagement ring. “We weren’t mentally prepared,” she eventually says. “I can’t even remember if the two funerals were in the same church. I think grief has affected my memory a lot and that’s quite common. Grief is such a powerful emotion; it takes up a lot of your brain.”

Five years later, she now knows how to remain positive. “I had an amazing mum for 18 years. I have the most amazing family, my little boy and my career, and that is because of her. The same with Fizz — I had an amazing sister. It’s heartbreaking they aren’t with us any more, but they are together and they are looking out for me,” she says, sounding as though she is repeating a mantra.

Having a baby made her feel closer to them both. “He was a boy — it’s funny, he actually looks a lot like Louis did — and I thought, this is what my mother must have felt. But then I had so many questions I couldn’t ask, even more because she was a midwife.”

Her biggest problem was her terror that something terrible would happen to her son. “I became fixated [on the idea that] something bad would happen to him, so I couldn’t sleep. You go to the worst-case scenario, because that’s happened to you twice, to two of the closest people in your life. I couldn’t turn the lights off at night; I needed to see him all the time. Luckily, it calmed down quite quickly.”

We are still flitting between her story and advice on make-up, exercise and clothes.

“I like sharing advice. If a child lost their mother, I would say there is no magic answer. But the point of this book is to show that you can have tragic things happen and still keep going.”

What would the 25-year-old now say to her younger self, struggling at her second funeral at the age of 20? “I would say, ‘You are going to be OK; you will live a nice life.’ I didn’t think I could. I thought this will be a really sad, lonely life without my mum and sister. I wouldn’t have believed then that I could be happy again. But it would have been nice to hear.”

Lucky Girl by Lottie Tomlinson (Bonnier, £22). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

[nei-ning]

I was feeling tired at 2am instead of 6am or 9am so I took melatonin just in case and fell asleep after 3am last night... Only to wake up at 4:30am after a dream.

In the dream I was in near by town from my childhood. This building, which had tiny market in it, was old 2 floored and BIG L shaped thing. Front side was for a bus to stop, front area tiny parking spot, old long "barn" as a storage.

I was outside and everything in my dream was different colors of gray, air filled with fog. All around this store building was fictional fighter characters. Some I knew, some I didn't. I tried to run past the long front side which was for the bus but Jack (that horrible, useless and ugly robot from Tekken) saw me and INSTANTLY attacked on me! I was hit in the face and everywhere else really, but I was not injured one bit - but I was still heck scared! I yelled at him: "Why are you attacking on me?!" as I managed to ran past him, heading to the front area of the shop.

As I ran, I knew Cid (original FF7) was there too, somewhere behind me but instead of chasing me, he had this control device of a huge fucking airplane! And I freaking heard it before seeing it flew behind the trees to my right, across the shop and road. I managed to get to the front area, seeing 4 or 5 men sitting in line against the wall. I knew they were drunk and I felt bad for them, but I had to hide. So I ran past them, sitting behind the last of them when this huge plane flew past us, just inches above the ground, disappearing into the other little wooden area.

It made no sound, it didn't harm the trees. It was like it was some kind of ghost plane - but I knew it would have killed me if it hit me. At this point, I don't like this dream anymore so I pulled my legs to my chest, hugging them, saying:

"Okay, this is just a dream. You can wake yourself up."

And I started to do that, wake myself up. I called my name gently, repeating "wake up." maybe 3 to 5 times before I opened my eyes. Tho, during this waking up, I noticed white paper on the ground coming to my feet. It had number 909 on it which changed into 609 and then into 6109! Below it was red "fat" text which had only 3 words in Finnish: "Kaikki koostuu osista." (Everything consists of parts.)

I woke up after this, instantly realizing I'm not fully awake yet, soul in the body, since I couldn't lift my left hand as an evidence that I'm awake. Luckily, few seconds later only, I could and I started to rub my eyes, turning night table light on.

I started to write this at 4:44am, ending it at 5:05am. More messages! There also was a tiny bird outside singing with one word only which sounded like "hyi" / "eww" :'D

I checked those numbers meanings in the dream and they all, pretty much, were the same old message: Time for action, you are protected, things are coming to fruition sooner than before, all is well, be brave, follow your heart etc. <3

*** I went back to sleep and had another dream. In this dream I went in a hospital and ended up in nurses' break room. There was 6-8 nurses, all different age size and look etc. but they all were SO INCREDIBLY KIND! Like honestly! They all smiled at me, laughed with me, told jokes with me, supported me and gave advice etc.

I told them about my situation with my mental health etc. and they were surprised, thinking I couldn't have autism with ADHD since I was so open, happy and talk so much! I told them I'm good at hiding it all.

Eventually group of 3 nurses gave me a ride to one of their home and the car drive was nice. We kept talking (or mainly I was the one doing the talking :'D), I put on wrong shoes but found mine and changed to them, there was Christmas lights and decorations at times on the trees and by the side of the roads whenever there was a house during the drive through this forest road. Lots of other weird things too in the dream but I'm leaving them out.

[godsnameisjoy]

NAMELESS CHANGE

Date: 23 July 2024

Duration: 37 minutes at 10:40 PM

Depth:

Yesterday’s blogpost, I was eager to write about. Today’s blogpost, I’m clearly not that enthusiastic about. Among the things I wrote about yesterday, there is a bit about me ‘hooking and unhooking’ my attention during meditations.

It has been years since I last struggled with my subconscious mind. It took me years to get my attention to muscle up against the super muscular subconscious. When the subconscious began showing up in my meditations, I remember denying the movement of my attention into the subconscious.

The subconscious would eat up my attention whole. It would find captive audience in my attention and weave all sorts of desires with the thread of my memories. I had no choice to think about anything when my mind would relax enough to get my subconscious to begin its play. For a week or 10 days of meditation more than a decade back, I wouldn’t allow myself calmness because it was bringing on my subconscious.

Conscious, waking mental chatter is so different from dream imagery. One has to let go of control over one’s attention to allow one’s desires to take over temporary control. That’s when I began hooking my attention onto whatever was available in order to free it from the colourful dream imagery of the subconscious.

Eventually, one learns to watch dream imagery without falling asleep. One learns to add more muscle to one’s calmed attention than one’s uncontrolled subconscious. I have covered the entire struggle in a few lines here now. However, it took me years to get to the point when I wasn’t actually falling asleep due to the subconscious mind’s last temptation.

Once I had got over the subconscious desire to sleep, it didn’t take that long to feel the first spinal vibration. Relatively speaking, getting over the subconscious took the longest. After spinal vibrations became regular, sometime after March of 2020, the attention has always been with the vibration and its cause.

The energy that causes spinal vibrations in advanced meditation is the energy that is stored in us all. It is there and is activated by calming and relaxing. In calming and relaxing, energies that are otherwise asleep, get activated. Of course, the activation itself feels like freed up life energy flowing in a stream up towards the centre of all meditations in the meditator’s head.

Activation of stored energy in the head is perceived as peace. I am finally getting to the point about last night’s meditation. I have been perceiving peace since life energy breached its flow into my head at the end of 2022.

For the last 24 nights of meditation, peace has turned into something else. It isn’t what it used to be.

In the last 24 days, I have referred to the changed feeling as ‘pleasure’. However, I am not sure if that’s the right word for the change. All I know is that I am, out of habit, hooking my attention onto peace but it isn’t peace that I am feeling anymore. It is something more. God willing, I’ll find the right word for it.

[phototagebuch]

23.7.2024: Wasserspinat

[louisupdates]

Louis Tomlinson, VICTORIOUS FESTIVAL [23.8.2024] 📸 Graham Tarrant

[jokeroutsubs]

[ENG SUB] Jan and Nace play: 'Finish the song', on Hitradio Center (23.7.2024)

Translation and CC by @kurooscoffee, review by anonymous JOS member, proofread by IG gboleyn123.

* 00:01 Song 'Ferrari polka' by Čuki, a Slovenian musical band that mostly creates pop, folk, and oberkrainer music. They've been active since 1989. * 00:58 Lyrics from 'V dolini tihi', a Slovenian folk song popularised by Ansambel Lojzeta Slaka * 01:22 'Prihaja Nodi' is the Slovenian title of the UK cartoon 'Make Way for Noddy'. The cartoon and its opening song were dubbed into Slovene and shown on RTV's kids program.

P.S.: Full radio interview (11 min) will be published tomorrow!

[winnythanawin]

-- Satang's ig story 23.7.2024 with Winny (screencaps)

[elvenova]

[FAEZ Ring: Valkyrie Aurelis ]

[Valkyrie Aurelis, banished from her homeworld, she's forced to discover her way back with the help of her new friends in order to stop her tyrant brother from ruling her kingdom. ]

[The new leader]

[Date: 23.7.2024]

[Winx Club OC - ToyHouse]

[shizue]

Oulu 17.7.2024 and 23.7.2024

[scurescar]

so, here I present the best art I think I made. Decided to make it in a Japanese paper style, combined with my styles. Hope you like it, cuz I spent a week drawing it.

Date: 23.7.2024

Elapsed: 9h12min

[louisupdates]

Within a few years, [Lottie] Tomlinson would be touring America, Asia and Europe, flying first class with Louis, part of the biggest boy band in the world, but until she was 15, the family had only ever gone to France once a year all packed into a seven-seater car, with her mother’s new partner, snacks laid out in the middle. They stayed in a caravan park. On a Sunday, a treat was to go to their mother’s hospital to see the babies.

While Louis just wanted to sing, play the guitar and listen to Oasis, the girls were obsessed with make-up.

Saturday nights were spent watching The X Factor. “My mother and brother kept applying; in 2010, he got in and the whole family went for the audition. We believed in him, but we never thought it would go that far.” One day the family were going to the live shows, the next the boy band was formed with Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Liam Payne. “He was 18. For my mum it was a big shock. It was all so sudden. The press and fans were in our front garden every day.”

“At first Louis didn’t really want his little sister gate crashing his new rock-star life, but now it feels like the best time of our lives — we experienced that craziness together,” [Lottie] says.

Her mother asked the family to keep her illness secret. “It was hard because you feel so isolated, but I understood. Louis was in the public eye and she didn’t want him questioned. She was determined to fight it and didn’t want everyone pitying her. My friends noticed I was acting differently for a few months. But I wanted to respect her wishes. It was her one request.”

Meanwhile, her older brother, who was launching his solo career, ensured there was enough money. “He’s incredibly generous. We looked after each other.”

Louis was also forging his career as a solo artist, eventually creating the song Two of Us about his mother’s death. “We were always so proud of Louis and what he was doing. We were not going to match up to being a global superstar, but we didn’t want to — ‘successful’ looks different for everyone,” she says.

When [Lottie] Tomlinson was invited to Bali, she asked Fizz whether she wanted her to stay behind. “She said she was OK, and then it happened while I was away,” she says. (Fizz accidentally overdosed on cocaine, an anxiety drug and painkillers, her inquest found.) “Louis called me…” She stops talking.

“[…] it’s funny, [Lucky] actually looks a lot like Louis did — and I thought, this is what my mother must have felt. But then I had so many questions I couldn’t ask, even more because she was a midwife.”

- Excerpts from the INTERVIEW: Lottie Tomlinson: we lost our mum and sister. Louis saved me. By Alice Thomson, The Times [23.7.2024] to promote Lottie’s book, Lucky Girl

[horax]

und sonst so, herr hegel?

(23.7.2024)

[tagesnotizen]

23.7.2024 | San Pietro | 15.30h

Der Bruder hat seinem jüngeren Sohn Glacé versprochen, um ihn zu einem Spaziergang zu bewegen, der ältere sitzt nach langen Vorträgen des Vaters am Tisch und zeichnet, die Schwägerin schläft. Die Mutter liegt alleine am Pool und ich weiss nicht, wie ich den Text über technische Entwicklungen anfangen soll. Es ist heiss und noch lange nicht Abend.

[landjahr]

23.7.2024

[wouldyoureadmyspine]

23.7.2024

[anujapathi]

JOB-MARY CASE

23.7.2024 proof of serviceDownload 24.7.24 Proof Affidavit KarthickDownload 24.7.24 Proof Affidavit SandhyaDownload 30.7.24 counter maintenanceDownload 30.7.24 reply counterDownload 31.7.24 counterDownload