Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Get hippie

After our slightly psychedelic gig experience last week myself and C, fellow housebunny, have come over all 1969.

C has taken to wearing silk Hendrix headbands over her curls and her burgeoning collection is strictly second hand or home made. I spent the weekend baking and S was happiest strumming on one of my collection of vintage guitars - truly the weekend passed in a kind of idyll. Now it’s over but here are the lessons I have learnt from our pseudo-commune.

To market, to market: Saturday was market day. I bought many ‘recycled’ items which would have set me back many, many, many pounds in a tarted up vintage shop. Instead, 1 x floral belted dress, 2 x dirndl skirts, 1 x pair of diamante embellished Dita-esque shoes, 1 x bottle-green Roberts radio and 3 metres of sumptuous silk stung me all of £13. Take lots of loose coins, attend market and repeat.

Bake, rattle and roll
: It’s not all about occasion baking. I made Banana muffins to use up stinky black bananas; I whipped up chocolate cookies as a procrastination device. Baking takes president over most things, especially tidying up breakfast rooms. S and C left me polishing my halo and packaging up bags of charity shop bound clothes and returned to find me in a sinful cloud of cocoa powder and flour. Dee-licious-lightful.

Get your rainy day book out
: This weekend, we went back to schoolday hobbies. Coloured pencils, sketchbooks, plenty of paper, dressing-up boxes, sewing - the idea is that whatever you were good at á l’ecole, you’d probably still get stickers for. I’m getting arts and crafts out of my past and starting a new rainy day book. I’m looking for inspiration for the future.

Do stuff a bit local
: Monday night, rainy sky, West End far away… turns out there’s a divine Indian right on our doorstep. Hurrah. The joy of this, of course (apart from the fact that hippies went to Goa and we went to Bombay Brasserie) is that - unless you live somewhere a bit upmarket - things that are nearby are generally independent, or as this wonderful website will have it, Unchained. From now on I’m patronising the locals as a priority and hoping I’ll get my £1 coins back as change in the Post Office. What comes around, goes around.

Let’s all become Nu-hippies. Or Post-rebels. Or something.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Tim Walker, Pictures, Design Museum


Chilly, drizzly London Sundays are made for museums. So off I went to the glorious Design Museum yesterday, in order to see the Tim Walker, Pictures exhibition. It was glorious - simply one of the best exhibitions I have seen in a long time; undoubtedly Pictures left an inspired imprint upon me that I haven't felt since I saw Anglomania, at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pictures was probably even better, as far as exhibition pragmatics go - I didn't have to jostle with anyone at all, it wasn't necessary to buy a time-alloted ticket and the Design Museum is just a great space, with lots of light, a wicked shop and Monmouth coffee in the café. Hurrah.

Back to Tim. One of my exhibition companions, S, commented the photographs were, 'the most English thing I have ever seen.' Englishness and childhood are indeed the prevailing themes in Walker's work, with the clothes, from Glastonbury wellies to Paris couture, neatly fitting into the narratives of his Pictures. What a great title, as well, for these are pictures - the word photograph speaks too strongly of documentation and detail where Tim Walker's work tells stories and explores ideas - these are pictures painted in the same way Lewis Carroll painted pictures of Alice.

One of the things the three of us found most striking about the work - at least, what we talked about afterward in the most English pub we could find - was the purity and clarity of Walker's ideas. We remember having ideas like these as game-playing children - as C so rightly commented, if we could get the dressing-up box out in the process it was a bonus - and one can’t help but feel that this is just how Walker works. His ideas are derivative of nothing but his own memories, experiences and idiosyncratic way of looking at the world - and he just so happens to have the best dressing up box you can imagine at his disposal. Plus, Lily Cole, Karen Elson and Erin O’Connor are all ready and willing to come and play.

Go see - you might bump into me as I am just not sure I can let this exhibition hurtle toward its 7th September close without another visit!

Friday, May 23, 2008

Greatest wallpaper on earth


I think I’ve found it. It’s everything I want it to be – whimsical, fantastical, non-girly, patterned enough to patch up crumbling 1906 walls, theatrical. I found it on the fantastic The Shop Floor Project which also stocks small selections of most things in the world, all by very covetable designers in incredibly beautiful designs. This wonderful wallcovering is by Daniel Heath; also check out the headgear by Karen Henriksen and the handprinted tattoo tights by Mhairi McNichol and Chloe Patience which I'm dying to wear with a cream Mayle dress.

So why do I have the wallpaper blues? It’s £250 a roll, which pretty much excludes me from its target market. Sigh.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

I'll never be a muso

Went to see MGMT last night; overall, a fun gig. Certainly better than the last I went to which, if I remember rightly, consisted of a girl with flowers in her hair warbling loudly while a young, deceptively normal-looking chap played spaghetti, shards of pasta showering the audience as he, er, strummed. No, I didn’t go to art school and no, I didn’t manage to suppress my giggles. I digress.

MGMT – and Florence & the Machine, the support, for that matter – have a gloriously OTT vibe. I wasn’t sure they quite fitted in the down and dirty Astoria – their rainbow-shiny hippy-star pop-a-delica should be reserved purely for hazy fields under Indian summer sun so that the artistes aren’t the only ones who can wheel about and jump and shout as we would have liked to have done last night, whilst wearing, not Impeccable Interview Outfit but my pale wide leg flare jeans (which are definitely having a moment) and bare feet. Instead we were reduced to shuffling to and fro, time and again as fellow audience members with the navigation of moths attempted to hurl themselves through our group and down a set of non-existent stairs.

That’s the thing about me and live music – I don’t think we’ll ever be besty pals. We haven’t grown up together. An outrage when you consider my father was in about twenty-six bands and my Mother couldn’t have looked more like Marianne Faithfull if she’d tried *. I just manage to feel slightly annoyed that I like any one band enough to actually queue to go to a venue to see them, wait 45 minutes, drink beer I don’t like, and then bop along to said tunes next to some kid who manages to spill beer in my pocket. This is all the stuff that gig aficionados romantically refer to as ‘part of it!’ Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy these affairs – I just can never quite shake the feeling that the lunatic girl dancing next to me in a bikini top (these bikini girls must be following me) is having a way better time than me and I really ought not to be there.

*Gotta love poetic license

Monday, May 12, 2008

Prima premiere

In the summer months it's nice to avoid London's perilous underground network and turn the two-stop journey into a few steps walk to the office. The same on the return journey. Only there are some evenings when my head-down-scurry through Leicester Square is transformed into an elbows-out crawl through crowds of people - premiere night. Acres (perchance I exaggerate) of the Square are turned into red carpeted stages for stars as they sashay past in shimmering frocks - at least I imagine this is the case as the most I have ever seen are The Public's hunched backs and straining necks, lurking, smoking paps and policemen redirecting pedestrian traffic as I fight past them all in the never-ending struggle towards the station.

Gosh, did I wish I'd avoided Leicester Square tonight. After some rather pleasant Monday shoe shopping (more on that, later) I was faced with a rammed barge-fest across the Square, only fully realising I should have taken a different route when it was too late to do so. The reason? The mother of all premieres; or, the unmarried thirty something doyenne of all premieres - that's right, those four ladies are in London, it was the Sex and the City movie premiere. So there are all sorts of women, everywhere. Lenses poke me in the eye, leaning blondes knock me for six, ladies yell, "Should of got up here about two o clock!" and, "Can't you see 'er Shell?"...

This jamboree just puts me right off going to see a film based on a show I have admittedly always adored. Not for nothing did Vanessa Friedman ominously observe, 'The Sex and the City juggernaut has rolled into town,' in her enlightening FT piece on the commercial aspects of this mega-movie. The commercial bandwagon indeed seems to be one with plenty of room for all. I've heard radio sponsors, seen tv build-up, there've been magazine articles for months, 'leaked' screen shots, a transparent trailer, heck, even CU shoe shots of key stilettos from the movie. It just turns my stomach and puts me right off.

In the park at the weekend my two gentlemen pals Monsieur I and Monsieur M were indignant when I announced I couldn't wait to go and see Sex and the City: The Movie, just so I could hate it (reminds me of a Berger line, more than anything else). At first I was foxed and thought perhaps it was just me being contrary; now I think I've tapped into my own psyche a little better. All this hullabaloo is just too, too much. I watched SATC ad nauseum because I love the show and it was a teensy bit niche, not because I heard idents on a cheesy radio station. I adored the outfits because it was fun to fantasise about out-of-reach designers not because I want to spot which It-shoes to get on the waiting list for. And I loved Carrie and co because they were just a bit cool and y'know what, the last thing all this is is cool.

I'm happy to be advertised at to a degree but I don't want this film shoved down my throat - then it's just going to make me sicky, not swoony. More than anything else, I just want all these people to get out of Leicester Square and let me stride on through, giving me and my new shoes some space. Hmm, Manolos might fly, eh?

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Wardrobe forecast

In London, we are having a burst of fine weather. (Perhaps we are having it in places that aren't London too...) Each morning I am attempting to evoke that celebratory but mistrustful vibe that to me speaks of style and sense. None of this hot-headed halter and hot pant malarkey - I'm leaving the bare legs and toes-out bravery to those who mal-propose (catachresis...) that the weather is "scorching". I hate these extreme and dramatic reactions to micro changes in the weather to which us Brits seem so prone. It's never cold but it's freezing and it never rains but it pours. Apparently. With these superlatives come wardrobe about-turns which are just plain annoying - just ask the girl in the bikini top on Oxford Street today. Honestly.

It's nice and sunny though and I can't deny that I am glad of it. Today, office chums V and N and I headed for G+Ts standing up in the sun and mainly spoke about hairdressers and shoes and shops and boys and girls and jobs and the girl in the bikini top on Oxford Street. Lunchtime drinking: a symptom of the side effects of sun. More side effects? Work-related apathy and social hunger. Somehow, the sunshine (and it's nothing to do with heat as it's not scorching and Our Towers is cool) instantly means I shift into go-super-slow mode. One morning's work equals a whole day's work in the sunshine. Sorry Ed.

Bring on the summer, proper, and legitimate bare toes and bikinis on beaches. Never on Oxford Street.

Image: C. R. Du'Pré

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Get it off my chest

It’s not very often that I wear an outfit from the beginning of the working day right through to the end without becoming tired of it, uncomfortable in it, or self-conscious about it. I don’t know why, it just seems that what looks good in my bedroom at 8am looks naff in the lift at work at 9.34am and plain try-hard in the toilets at 12.49pm, and just scruffy by 5.37pm when I glimpse myself in a shop window. Such is life, I suppose - that’s what you get for being fickle and far from a fashion queen.

Today was an exception. I wore a very bargainous pale denim pocketed smock dress with an outsize grey cardi all tied up with a pale blue vintage belt. Black opaque and black patent wedges rounded things up. It was sunny today so it was a nice day. A feeling fine in a swing my arms/don’t mind the walk from the station/feel chirpy even in Tesco kind of way.*

When I was almost home, two young-ish chaps (how old does that make me sound? Allow me to clarify, I’m twenty-two and they were probably not much more youthful) walked past me in the other direction and one of them offered, ‘Nice tits.’ Hmmph. Now that’s not a mood-enhancer, whichever way you look at it. I suppose, really, it is a compliment but I just find it annoying, not to mention vaguely embarrassing. To me, the real insult is the reductive nature of the comment. It makes me feel like this is all I am, breasts. Maybe they are nice but how about my carefully put together outfit? Expensive haircut? Lips? Face? Handbag? Hey, wait - brain?

Let’s face it, this chap couldn’t care less about my brain and nor would he ever get the chance to find out. There’s the rub. If he really thinks I have nice tits what is even the point in saying anything? It isn’t going to get him anywhere. I tried to reverse the situation and wondered about what might happen if I walked past a guy on the street and commented on his bum, for example. I rather think the reaction might be amusement, a little confusion and certainly an ego boost. So what is it about women and breasts?

I think us girls have a strange relationship with our bosoms. Yes, they’re symbols of womanhood but they are also very tied up with what men like and desire to gain from women (whether sex or children or porn). Actually, I love mine but I didn’t grin and say thanks and share information about favourite bras and flattering necklines with this young gentleman, as I may have done if a woman had said the same. It seems as though breasts have become the page three symbol of male to female sexual attraction. If a man remarks upon them it’s almost as if he is crossing a line and intruding somewhere uninvited in a way that wouldn’t be the case had he remarked upon my smile. Similarly, would I have been so offended if I had teeny Trinny tits?

What do you think?

* Note that I quickly returned to my chirpy mood and have just consumed lemon risotto and two G+Ts with glee.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Birds and their books

Yesterday, at work, an email came round. Subject: Free Stuff. It was books! How exciting. A table diagonally across the office to me heaved with hardbacks and paperbacks, some still with their A4 press release half-heartedly slipped inside. A crowd flocked round and many came away with wobbly stacks of books. I went to make coffee and diverted to the book table for a peek. A sea of pink and mauve; faceless women and sick-making titles plastered over the covers. How were they even able to choose between titles like She Woke Up And Was Married and Reality Check? I was shocked to discover that what my colleagues were stock piling was (hate this phrase) chick-lit.

Firstly, let me address the reasons I hate the phrase chick-lit. In itself, it means literature for women. But at the same time, it doesn't. Chick? Am I a chick? Dear god, no. I might be crowbarred into feeling like one at a hen night, I might be matily called one by a distant female acquaintance but please, no, I'm not a chick. Women as birds is a dangerous concept. It transports me back to an A Level play, The Cagebirds by David Campton, in which women are literally represented as caged birds. Do we peck at our 'lit', dipping in and out of it on a beach or a packed train as we make mental lists entitled Calories Consumed and Shoes To Buy? Some might, many don't. Do we alight, magpie-like upon silver embossed letters on a baby pink background? Again, seemingly, plenty of us do. I fly off - I mean, walk away, in revulsion.

What of the lit part? Must literature be abbreviated in order that women may buy it? Must novels be categorised into a single genre to make book buying the work of seconds rather than blurb-reading Borders-browsing entire lunch hours or indeed afternoons? Maybe chick-lit's the equivalent of Delia's fast food, Aunt Bessie's instant mashed potatoes. The thing is that most of the women I know shy away from these moronic covers. But you don't need me to tell you that the marketing men (or women) wouldn't keep churning them out if they didn't sell.

I came upon this article today which discusses the covers of such books. Amanda Marcott references this piece by Karen Heller and what's interesting is the fact that many of the authors whose work gets put behind these glossy nothing-y covers are being caged into the chick-lit genre - they are writing superb literature for women, not bird food tales of high heels and orgasms. Even my wonderful Jane Austen’s been, er, pigeon-holed. She would be livid.



The disembodied women part is fascinating too. I hadn’t noticed it until I read these aforementioned musings this morning and now I can think of countless covers in which we see women’s feet, women’s toes, women’s legs, backs of slender necks and faceless figures. It’s sinister stuff. Yes it means you can easily (easily’s admittedly irksome) put yourself in the place of the narrator or main character but really, can the publishers and designers not leave that to the authors and their narrative modes? In my opinion this strategic cropping of women is fetishisation of women, for women. Publishers believe that in our increasingly fragmented and individually portioned lives women will only identify with other women if they are represented as an essentially inanimate object - an ankle, a pair of shoes and a shopping bag, a hairstyle and a slender neck. Whole packages and faces come warts and all but slender ankles wearing pretty shoes are easily overvalued and transformed into women who have everything and can be anything.

I read Becoming Jane and became so inspired as to feel one day I would like to write a book; I am, though, petrified it would be chick-littered. I am confident I wouldn’t complete a novel I felt would be deserving of one of those cropped fetishised women but what if it trod a fine line? And I can’t help but feel there’s a connection to blogging. Here, do I call myself a Girl because it sounds glam and aspirational? I wrote about weight loss issues and used a pretty picture of a cake. Was that my version of the strawberry shortcake? What do you think?

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Within reach




My bambi-lashed friend K gushed last night about how much someone she loves, loves what they do. In illuminating detail she described how he'd spent the day flying businessmen over Paris (aeroplane belly seeming to brush the heights of the Eiffel Tower), come straight home to suburbia, walked through the door and told her, simply, "I love what I do." What a wonderful anecdote. The true beauty of this tale is in the back-story. His career didn't lap-land - he had a dream, he took risks, he worked hard and eventually he got his just desserts; pleasingly, the reality of his fantasy turned out to be as sweet as brioche.

I'm happy to say that "living the dream" is a phrase I often hear from pals of mine - and it's only said quasi-ironically. They mean it and it makes me grin, whether I know them a little or a lot, whether they are journalist, student, doctor or something I don't even understand. I find it hard to comprehend those who choose vocations based on convenience or cash - or who simply (I heard this somewhere recently) - aren't picky. Hmmph. People, be picky and get happy.

Barbara Kingsolver, in her author's note for The Poisonwood Bible eloquently sums up what she's learnt through writing the novel - 'it's no use waiting for things that appear at a distance; a spirit of adventure will usually suffice.'

This includes the Eiffel Tower.

Image: K.Coman