angels everywhere

On Sunday morning, in the damp chilly Brompton Cemetery, shooting an idea for our conceptual art, I passed this statue. Someone had placed the flower there. I have no idea who, or why.

Today, I've heard back from Roz's mum regards our ElleGate story, and she feels, as I do, that it's time to let it go. Let 'them' win. I'll go into details another time - the story is too stupid and too unpleasant to even try to explain - but as she said "I can think of many examples from past personal experience where bitter anger over injustice has led not to the injustice being redressed, but to shattering of peace of mind."



Or, as my wonderful friend Karin Robinson said:

"When something like this happens, it's so easy to get distracted from what we love to thinking about fixing the things we hate. Sometimes that's important and right. But equally often, we risk losing sight of why we are doing what we love in the first place.

That's what's important. And, forgive me if this sounds corny, but I think that in any battle between the passionate person who is doing what they love in a creative and inspiring way, and someone who steals from others, trying to gain undeserved fame, the creative person wins because THEY GOT TO DO THE WORK. Nothing the thief can do will ever really make the work theirs."



My father taught me that in any situation that causes pain or conflict in our lives - any at all - there is always, always, something positive that we can glean from it. Some learning experience.

I had wanted to win this, not for the money (it was such an insignificant amount anyway - Carmen's editor, Sibila, had asked ME how much I wanted to go away, it wasn't like we were suing them) but to try to set a precedent. I wanted to be the big strong older sister to help all you youngsters out there so when it happened with you, you could site Adams vs. Elle. I wanted to fight this stupid war with a large and powerful corporation so that you wouldn't have to. But it was really starting to seep into my brain and make me angry: I haven't had the stomach to take a single streetstyle shot of a stranger since this started, because I couldn't guarantee that their image would be safe. So Carmen B, and her boss Sibila, won in a sense, because they filled my head with all that bad stuff, and stopped me from doing what I had once loved to do.



But here's what's come from this experience: the force of support, the genuine passion, that I've received from each of you has at times moved me to tears. Our friendship (my husband and mine) with Roz and her family have grown. And most importantly, an angel appeared in my life in the form of Lucia Rubio, a young lawyer who lives and works in Madrid, who has studied French in London, and who has given so much time, and worked so hard, refusing payment, just because she felt a strong sense of right and wrong.

I now have a new friend: Lucia, and that's all thanks to Elle.es. And in the end: no one died. What they took was a copy of a few images, a few pixels of light and dark on a computer screen, and besides, living well is the best revenge.