That Bad Other Girl

Fury Unbound

2011-05-30T20:24:00.000Z

Unbound is a neat little idea. A digital platform (oh, go on then, website) which allows authors to upload details of their project, courting support from individuals, corporations, anyone with their credit card at the ready I guess, which, when published will give them privileges including their name printed at the back of the book. Financial support equals eventual publication. Fantastico, one thinks, a gem of an idea which will surely result in the unpublished, the unsupported, the under-funded and the undiscovered becoming – well, becoming the reverse of all of those things.

And then you visit the website and discover that current submissions are from authors already described as 'legendary' and future submissions are limited to those who have already been published. Yes, the unpublished can submit if they're supported by an agent, but what about those undeservedly in the literary wasteland? It does seem like a wasted opportunity, with the burgeoning homogenisation of the book trade – support for the unsupported should be a priority. Surely these 'legendary' authors could get their newness published anyway? What do you think?

Picture: 'The Natural World', 2009, by Stanford Kay

Five-minute face #1 – Peachy keen

2011-05-30T19:48:00.000Z

A recipe for looking lively on a grey Sunday lunchtime (without a vodka martini)

1 x application of Control Color N in Coral by RMK (a very fluid base product – don't expect OTT coverage, do expect an even-ing of skin-tone, a brightening of your wintry pallor and best of all, quick-as-a-flash application)
1 x slick of Lash Doubling Mascara by Clinique (mascara for the shy – it's not a Geordie Shore look, it's just a little glossy black tint, a little volume and a lotta separation)
1 x dusting of Revlon Blush in Perfectly Peach (no shimmer, no shine, just a fifties flush)
1 x slick of Rimmel Moisture Renew lipstick in Nude Delight (I don't think you'll find a better nude for a fiver or so – if you do, let me know)

Wear with a floral, a flat, and a polka-dot brolly, in case of grey skies. As Sinatra says, anything goes.

I heart baking

2010-02-09T22:18:00.001Z

Have you seen that Lurpak advert where the burly-yet-adorable guy makes a really rather delish looking pie? I love it, because to me, that's cooking. It's messy, it's imperfect and things do go wrong but nine times out of ten you get something amazing for your efforts – and your friends love you for it. Baking's a little bit different: you create heaps of mess around the edges but in the middle needs to be something deliciously perfect and really rather enviable, both aesthetically and with a view to popping it in your mouth. I think these jammy hearts are the very embodiment of that. Occasion baking gets me through the 'holidays': baking something adorable totally makes up for the general tackiness of Valentine's Day. I've baked these for the adorable café You Don't Bring Me Flowers in Hither Green – they'll be on counter this weekend, raspberry red and ready to be bought for V-day!

How to dress for Vogue

2010-01-09T12:37:00.000Z

1. Ensure you are prepared in advance by only washing a peculiar mix of items from wardrobe, leaving majority of respectable clothes on floor or in washing basket.

2. Lay in bed until last possible moment, telling self you are actually SAVING time by planning outfit in head rather than running around like headless chicken.

3. Get up with twenty-five minutes to do everything, but feeling very smug that out of nothing you have managed to assemble outfit of decent proportions using only imagination. Possibly MORE of an achievement than if you had limitless clothing budget and insatiable thirst for doing laundry.

4. Remember not only is it painfully cold but Britain is in the clutches of the BIG FREEZE – hence planned outfit is useless, mainly because heeled boots are rendered impractical, unless of course you are Nicholas Coleridge and have chauffeur-driven car. Wasted.

5. Decide warmth and safety are paramount and no one is going to look at what an intern wears anyway.

6. Put on ALL clean clothes from The Clean Pile – good combinations include different stripes together, jeans with broken zips, jeans with rips and don't forget the odd socks.

7. Tah dah! Admire very padded, very mismatched look. Congratulate self for totally channelling the Michelin Man crossed with Wurzel Gummidge look this season. SURE Lucinda Chambers will be doing same in A/W 10/11 Marni show.

8. Decide very wise to wear wellies to walk in, take suede boots to change into when entering W1 postcode. Upon removal of wellies, realise they are actually odd and one is wearing a green size 8 welly with grey sole, and one size 6 green welly with yellow sole. Laugh in public, as if a bit of a crazy. Curse damned dark under-stairs cupboard and pre-coffee brain.

9. Enter Vogue House, shudder, and vow to be better, prettier and more stylish tomorrow.

10. Repeat.

Back to black

2009-11-27T16:26:00.000Z

I am a fan of black nail polish. In editorial. When it looks all glossy and neat, when it's paired with a super-cool outfit (probably including studs or feathers), painted onto short, sweet nails all ultra precise and lovely by some uber nail tech-trix. Then – and only then – does it look amazing.

At home, black just isn't the same – it often looks very DIY because it's totally unforgiving, so it's probably a bit messy, jagged round the edges, marked from your bedsheets or iffily smudged around the cuticle region, where a bright or nude colour could get away with not being superbly applied. What's more, black polishes tend to need at least three coats, even if you use a good brand (Essie, par exemple) and this only exacerbates the risk of mess-up.

What's more, I think black nail polish has a strong tendency to look a bit like door paint, or undercoat. That nasty not-matte not-gloss compromise ... a sort of Satinwood for nails. And that I do not like. I bring good news, though: I have happened upon a solution. Credit must be given to the therapists at Glow Urban Spa who introduced me to this little trick about a year ago... I've only just cottoned onto this as a home trick, though. It's tres simple. Paint on two coats of navy, dark green, dark red, or similar – whatever you want. Then finish with one thin coat of black – Essie's Licorice is ideal, or I'm using Bourjois So Laque! in Noir de Chine. It looks black, but not dull like house paint. You get the depth of the underneath colour which sort of tones the black, so it's almost imperceptible as a deep deep deep dark blue and just looks like a really great 'shade' of black. Somehow it also looks glossier, though a coat of Jessica Brilliance top-coat won't do any harm.

Hurrah! Smart girl's goth nirvana.

Forget cupcakes

2009-10-20T22:48:00.000Z

I'm kind of over cupcakes. That may sound terribly self-conscious but there was a time when there was novelty in a giant, creamy, Magnolia Bakery style American cupcake. No longer – every Tom, Dick or Sally's setting up a kitsch-themed cupcake co from their kitchen and every other wedding has a tower of them in place of cake: no longer are brides content to send home guests with a slice of cake – each attendee must have their OWN.

Snobbishness aside, the trendy kind of cupcake is too big to be eaten elegantly at parties, too sweet to be satisfyingly finished and has far too much icing – you're always left with a lump of the crumb-y toothache inducing stuff in your napkin. So time for a change. How about a return to the fairy (or butterfly) cake of school fêtes and Sunday teas? Not small enough to be a canapé but not so large it could constitute a small meal (a few delicious bites and it's gone), cute beyond anything and not so sweet it should have the number of a local dentist printed inside the bottom of the paper. It's along these lines I've been thinking for a special recipe I'm trying to concoct for a friend's hen night, or potentially wedding – and here's the first incarnation below. It's a mini Victoria Sponge with a catch: it's filled with créme patissiere and a raspberry reduction instead of buttercream and jam and the sponge is infused with rosewater for a tiny twist. I think they've turned out rather well – next time I'm making a few amends and after my second 'draft' I'll let you in on the recipe...

Most beautiful

2009-07-01T19:54:00.005Z

It occurred to me today that a wonderful moment in Sam Mendes' American Beauty, one which I actually recall on a day to day basis, may have been pretty significant; and if not significant then certainly representative. Ricky, obsessed by documenting the everyday and the beautiful, shows Jane (Thora Birch) a short piece of film – in it, a white plastic bag is whipped and rolled around by the wind. Somehow, Ricky, Jane and Mendes convince their audience of its overwhelming beauty: I certainly am always caught up in the gorgeousness of the mundane when I watch. "It helps me remember. I need to remember," says Ricky.

I think Ricky's need to capture is significant, and maybe even sparked in myself a need to do the same. To create merely by documenting is appealing to the artistically lazy, after all. His panic is resounding – he can't bear for that moment – any moment, it sometimes seems – to go unrecorded. Whether it's access, mere zeitgeist or the digital age which has brought it about, the need to document seems to be stronger now – friends turn into paparazzi, work colleagues blog what they've eaten for dinner (artfully posed with laundry pile cropped out, no doubt), while Facebook and Twitter allow a certain distillation of self until one merely becomes a redhead who drinks Pimm's, wears blue nail varnish, and enjoys the music of Fleet Foxes. And these distillations are so much easier to swallow than your real self. Describing oneself in 160 characters might make us sound better (there's certainly no room in there for awkward contradictions, sad moments, regrettable actions, embarrassing moments...) But isn't that a bit of a shame? In framing ourselves are we doing ourselves an injustice? Is the cropped out laundry pile the really interesting bit?

I'm reading Sebastian Faulks' On Green Dolphin Street at the moment, and incidentally totally loving it. I've just read a moment where Charlie lounges under a Southern French tree and muses upon a biography. He becomes rather philosophical and gives his thoughts on writers thus:

"From what he could gather from novelists' own diaries and letters, the urge that was common to them all was a need to improve on the thin texture of life as they saw it; by ordering themes and events into an artistically pleasing whole, they hoped to give to existence a pattern, a richness and a value that in actuality it lacked. If after reading such a novel you looked again at life – its unplotted emergencies, narrative non sequiturs and pitiful lack of significance – in the light of literature, it might seem to glow with a little of that borrowed lustre; it might seem after all to be charged with some transcendent value."

This rings so true to me - what, after all, do we do in any art at all, but reflect portions of life and in framing, cropping, distorting or reflecting them, attempt to make them look beautiful? And why? Because sometimes when we see them again, we really see them, and they really do look beautiful. Look out for that plastic bag. And now, in the social media age, we do it to ourselves. We hope that in framing our quirks and pretty intricacies, photographing our beautiful moments and drawing attention to the activities we feel define us, when we live them, breathe them, share them, they will seem beautiful to us and ours, and from beauty we will find happiness.

Here's hoping.

Product Crush #1

2009-04-13T11:47:00.003Z

In my capacity as a beauty journo (for the time being anyway - in These Times it seems cavalier to call oneself anything when one may soon be churning espresso for dollar) I get to see product upon product and sample product upon product. Yes, it's as good as it sounds, there's no denying the perks of the job. The drawback, of course, is that we can't always write about them all - we do try, but sometimes they just don't fit into the piece whether visually, price-wise or whether they're too similar to something else we have to include because the brand advertise. So that's why I thought I'd start my Product Crush 'series' - the products I really rate (of course it's personal and skin/hair/nail-type specific but I'll try not to mention anything I think will disappoint anyone) regardless of brand, price, availability, or packaging.

This will be my only foray into beauty on this blog - I think about it enough already. But if you're after more beauty home truths, do check out Miss Malcontent and her Truth in Beauty - her recommendations and reasoning are all solid and super entertaining.

So onto #1...

Label.M Resurrection Style Dust

Label.M is a brand that has crept up on me rather, with its fabulousness. I was introduced to Resurrection Style Dust by Cos Sakkas, one of Toni & Guy's top stylists and I loved it so much I went so far as to buy it, considering there was none hanging about in the cupboard and I'm not one for asking. If your hair is lacking in volume this product is like the holy grail - a mere sprinkle and a ruffle with the fingers will build volume where there was none before. And if halfway through the night (for this is really for eveningwear, unless you're either very sparing or you wish to look like a hockey-playing toff) you see flatness returning, a mere brush through and a little zsush will see the volume 'resurrected' (aha) with no need for more product. It's a bit like Aveda's Pure Abundance Potion, only better. The drawback? It needs to come in an enormous pot because I'm addicted to it. Also by Label.M check out their volumising mousse which comes as a spray, perfect for fine hair, and their masks kick some dry hair ass.

Bad girl's back, alright

2009-02-24T19:29:00.002Z

At least, I think I am. It's too soon to tell but I think the urge to self-publish has overcome me once more.

Head rush

2008-06-15T19:30:00.003Z

Ribbons + buttons + clips + newly blonded hair + event = self-indulgent fascinator creating...

Summer dressin'

2008-06-13T09:57:00.005Z

This is my last day of 'between jobs' freedom and I'm oh-so excited about what I have planned. The To-Do list is lengthy but there's only two nasty things on there (1. Pay parking ticket 2. Pay gas bill) - everything else is along the lines of, 3. Try on outfits, 4. Go and buy wedding card, 5. Buy ribbon ... you guessed it, dear reader, I'm off to a wedding. Or more accurately, a wedding after-party.

Summer weddings are the grown-up version of my undergraduate summer balls which were a delight and a tradition. Set in the picturesque quad of our college, for four years in a row (I went back for one) my first year roomie and I dolled ourselves up for the glam meets alcoholic-sham all-nighter. Often the getting ready was the best part; it's certainly the part I, er, remember best. Ball/party/must-wear-dress events are my favourite kind of outfit planning. I adore deciding whether or not this dress requires earrings, what shade of nail polish should be worn, which shoes are dressy enough without being matchy matchy - everything going towards creating the elusive elegant yet kooky, sexy yet subtle special effect. Event-dressing is the perfect opportunity for finishing touches you wouldn't normally have time for - G and I always used Summer Ball as an excuse to do something fun from fresh flower corsages to ribbons in the hair, vintage bags and belts, big time blow dries and Grecian maxi dresses, there was always something new to add to the mix. Alternative flat shoes had to be worked into the outfit, and the process was without fail smoothed along by champagne, strawberries and a lungful of Elnett. Yum.

Excuse my reminiscing; hopefully tomorrow's festivities will match up. Hopefully my outfit won't match match.

Raspberry hooray

2008-06-10T13:31:00.007Z

I've talked before about my blind love for baking and never is it more fun than when you are either procrastinating or bored as anything. Yesterday, I was both.

I was rummaging through the fridge when I chanced upon half a punnet of raspberries that Housebunny and Mr. Housebunny had neglected. Well out of date and looking a bit squishy, I was reluctant to chuck or compost them as raspberries are heaven in a berry as far as I am concerned; I just didn't have the heart. That was when I remembered culinary queen M waxing lyrical about a raspberry sponge she once made. So I gave it a go.

What deliciousness emerged from the oven 15-20 minutes later! A magnificent sponge was studded with the little pink gems which had formed fruity starbursts throughout the cake. I can't get enough of this baked goody. Try it, and serve with cream. You could experiment with other berries, or a mix, but you're morally obliged to let me know how you get on.

M's royal raspberry sponge

4 oz self-raising flour
4 oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
2 eggs
As many raspberries as you have, or your heart desires

1. Grease and line a cake tin or two (if you want to do a sponge sandwich, double these quantities and make two). I used round tins about 1 1/2 " deep and the size of a large side plate. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar in whatever method you prefer - I am currently using a whisk attachment on my food processor as my hand mixer has bitten the proverbial dust. If you're lucky enough to have a KitchenAid, I'm jealous.

3. Add the eggs and then the flour, little by little. Don't worry if the batter seems a little thick - this only means the mixture will hold the raspberries better and they won't sink.

4. Fold in your raspberries gently and try not to squish them too much - you want them to stay intact so that they form little bursts throughout the cake.

5. Spoon into your tin(s) and bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on it though and as soon as a skewer emerges from the centre of the cake clean, and the sponge springs back with a vengeance, it's ready. Cool in the tin for ten minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack.

6. You could sandwich this together with whipped cream and more fresh fruit, or just serve with pouring cream. De-licious.

Sew improvised

2008-06-05T22:58:00.003Z

I've been to Saturday drama classes. I'm the veteran of summer theatre courses (Grease in a week!). I've done GCSE, A Level, heck I've even done a degree in drama. So I can improvise all right. [Freeze!]

Which is a good job because I've started sewing some new additions to my wardrobe and gosh darn it, improv is an essential tool to have in your needlework box. Second only to fabric scissors which I soon realised I wouldn't get too far without. My first creation was a nipped and tucked sassed up versh of an old dress; my second I began today and it's going to be - thimbled fingers crossed - a swishy dirndl skirt in a fun print. The material's an absolute biatch to work with though - it puckers and creases at any available opp and my machine has endless issues. The needle breaks or it runs out of thread or it won't move and I don't know why... I'll never be a seamstress, though I'm enjoying these dabbles.

Thriftiness is certainly in style, if that's possible. You can hardly pick up a glossy supplement or free tabloid rag without being told all about credit crunch fashions - works for me as I am about to begin a six month (hopefully career enhancing) unpaid stint and it's certainly a stylish office. What better reply to a compliment than to say your skirt is home-made? This relies on getting the compliments first, of course. It's much much more difficult to pick out a second hand skirt or to sew a top than to pick a garment off a rail at (insert fave shop here) and have the result look good. Unfortunately, thriftiness doesn't make up a percentage of style - you don't look better just 'cos it's vintage. In fact, you're more likely to look worse - hence the cachet that comes from getting second hand/vintage/own-made/reclaimed right. Instant style credit that never crunches.

So when I finish my twirl-able navy skirt I'm going to have to force myself not to be sentimental (a feat the writers of tonight's episode of Gossip Girl were unable to manage). That's if I ever finish it. Turns out the folks at Burda Style were optimistic when they said "Beginner" and "hour or two". They hadn't figured TBOG might be at the pedal.

Wish me luck.

That Bad Messy Girl

2008-06-02T20:54:00.001Z

God damn, I am messy. I mean, really, seriously messy. I don’t think you have ever known anyone as messy as I am. I just distribute the atoms of my life in packages, parcels and piles all over and around any environment I enter. I have at least six wardrobes; one in the car, one in the hallway, one draped over the banisters, one in the bathroom and at least two on my bedroom floor. Oh the actual wardrobe? Well that’s reserved for glitzy show costumes from when I was six years old. Obviously.

I just can’t help it. I think it’s one part laziness, one part genetics and one part self-destructiveness. Maybe subconscious fear has a part to play too - like, I can never fall too hard if I have all this stuff around me to cushion the impact. I do love mess a little bit, though. I remember watching Lost In Translation and going all gooey over the artful abomination that is Charlotte’s (Scarlett Johansson) hotel room. So much more life-embracing and comfy than the clean (puke) lines the room is designed with. I don’t mind clean and tidy rooms; I LOVE messing them up, though. Just not thinking and strewing stuff everywhere - it’s my stock in trade. Everywhere I go I leave a little trail of make-up products, cocktail rings, restaurant receipts, blue nail varnishes, old novels, new mags, broken pens, half-filled notebooks, disposable cameras, partly empty coffee pots, totally empty wine glasses, screwed-up cake wrappers, undone leather belts…

My messiness does totally screw me over, though. I can’t find things, I tread on (and break) things (then get glass in foot), I constantly (and I mean constantly) feel I should be tidying up and I do think that if my house was impeccably tidy, my life would be perfect. Of course, it wouldn’t be. But it might exist in a better looking frame.

Home and away

2008-06-02T00:16:00.003Z

I'm taking a little time out between jobs, so recently I've been a homebird. It's rather nice; there's time to do all the things you always meant to do but never got round to. So far I've painted my front door a nice navy blue, turned my £3 M&S market bought dress into a sassier version of itself - complete with ruffles - whipped up a mean chilli for pals and cleared out the kitchen dresser (in the process stumbling across a darling little vintage watch which must have been Mama's).

This evening I also got around to watching a movie I've been meaning to catch for ever - The Motorcycle Diaries. That's when I realised there's something else I never got around to doing; I forgot to ever go travelling. It's something I would like to do but honestly I don't think the time has ever been right. If I was going to go away for plenty time, it would have to be exactly right. The repercussions of Guevara's travels in the movie (certainly I ought to read up as well; I intend to) are vast and really, I would want any stint away to have a great impact on me too. Not that I am ever going to become a Communist revolutionary - more's the pity - but an extended holiday would just feel pointless. Travel for travel's sake is a huge luxury and if I was going to capitalise on it I would at least need to feel that I had the made the most of the opportunity, whether through making a physical impact or forming personal ideas.

Adventure comes out of the blue, though - you don't have to hop on a plane to find it. Prettiness itself, M, told me a friend of hers will often take a different route to work just to add adventure to his day. Or you can take a trip back in time like I have done today, simply by rifling through my kitchen drawers. Guaranteed you'll make discoveries untold.

*Just as a footnote, is there anything more beautiful than Gael Garcia Bernal?

Beauty is ballet

2008-05-30T14:01:00.002Z

Get hippie

2008-05-27T21:34:00.002Z

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.

Tim Walker, Pictures, Design Museum

2008-05-26T11:30:00.009Z

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!

Greatest wallpaper on earth

2008-05-23T18:45:00.006Z

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.

I'll never be a muso

2008-05-22T13:02:00.001Z

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

Prima premiere

2008-05-12T22:33:00.004Z

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?

Wardrobe forecast

2008-05-08T20:01:00.006Z

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

Get it off my chest

2008-05-07T20:58:00.003Z

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.

Birds and their books

2008-05-03T10:28:00.005Z

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?

Within reach

2008-05-01T19:45:00.003Z

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

At liberty

2008-04-30T14:01:00.002Z

Today I have been running around pretending to be a roadie (more of that later) but my thoughts have been occupied by Liberty London Girl's kind post that I was alerted to this morning.

I've been addicted to her blog for a good while now and I was over the moon to read that she likes my writing. I've always said that this blog was for writing but LLG's linkage will probably send a few more readers over this way too and feeling part of the blogosphere is divine. Reading comments that agree with what I'm blogging about make me feel like I've just drunk a Black Russian. That's to say, sweet and warm inside.

Mmm, cake

2008-04-29T22:25:00.003Z

Dieting - whatever that might be - gets plenty of press. If we're counting slebs' respective column inches I don't know who'd win but I'm willing to put money on the notion that weight gain and weight loss would trump VB mentions many times over.

I've pretty much always felt I need to be slimmer. The funny thing about that is, over time, the only thing I have actually become is larger, so I may as well not have bothered lusting after a slimmer self. Right now, I'd give anything to have the figure I had around my second year of university but I can remember being in a blind panic about having to wear certain costumes for certain performances at that time and it just seems sad that no matter what my body shape I have always thought it wasn't good enough.

The problem, I think, with trying to lose weight is that you already feel you've failed before you've started. It's a bit like New Year's Resolutions - in making them you must acknowledge fault or failure and so if you start with a negative, mentally, you are only going to fall further into the minus. In telling myself my eating habits must change, the message I am subconsciously receiving is "you're a big fat pig who eats too much, you've done it all wrong and you should be better." Not great for anyone, even worse for me who would rather ignore failings than admit I am less than perfect. Yuh, it's not my best trait.

So now I am changing the way I think. At least, I hope I am. I haven't failed or done anything essentially wrong in putting on weight - I just have to eat less than some people in order to look the way I want to look. Being hungry isn't great but I want to feel better about myself and losing a few lbs is something I can do. Fingers crossed I don't lose it from the, er, decolletage...

Style and the singleton

2008-04-28T12:48:00.002Z

Lately, I've been feeling a bit left behind in the style stakes. You know when you get to that point and you wonder what on earth you are going to wear today, tonight, tomorrow or at any other time present or future? And for that matter, whatever have you been wearing all this time? I'm gazing at my, admittedly extensive, library of clothes and these days I just don't know what to put on.

I have lots of ideas of what I'd like to wear but sadly no cash with which to purchase the items which would make the outfits of my dreams possible. And you know what, even if I did, my post-eating too much for 22 years physique has stopped looking good in anything at all. Interval training's my NBF, but that's another post.

The problem of course is that there are certain facets of my life which mean that looking good is pretty important. My career, my pride, my city, my age, my marital status. As a single girl, you've gotta be constantly stepped up and groomed and sometimes that seems like no mean feat. I don't think single style behaviour is all about effort, though, and super grooming. We all know guys and girls have different ideas about fashion - what's uber cool or chic to a lady, will make a gent recoil in 'is that a fancy dress costume' horror.

Take my beautiful friend, M. She's a single young lady, into her fashion, who was recently lambasted at a work personality and team exploration bonding session as not having made any effort. The three piece suit conference cad who threw out this comment may not have appreciated her this season florals, vintage boots and flicked eyeliner but in a bar I can tell you it goes down a treat. What goes down even better, is a very particular top M owns. I was with her when she bought it and let me tell you it was not purchased as a man-magnet. It's a whimsical looking high neck star print bad boy that is flattering and pretty but by no means vampy. Here's the interesting part - it draws men like flies. M often gets approaches - but star guy increases approaches by approximately tenfold. "I like your stars... you're a star..." mumbled one young man. A stripy shirted lad sidled up and commented "stars and stripes..." with a wink, another grins and offers, "stars in your eyes". Others simply came over to declare an outright and passionate love for the top. She wears it well - but no girl would ever have realised it would draw in guys like students to snakebite.

I have a dress that has a similar effect. It's perhaps more obvious that this dress would pull in the punters, considering its low neckline - but it's navy, covered in purple horses and I often wear it wit flat shoes and feel like a little girl whose other interests include ballet; this is the reason I love it. But it turns normally sane men into men who are interested in me. Odd.

What I seem to be saying here is that maybe men have taste after all; what I actually feel to be the case is that they are even more of a mystery to me than ever.

Being left

2008-04-27T14:22:00.000Z

Mum went without a word - her drug chart would have told you why. As the memory of life sharply began to fade, her beauty was astounding. Smooth skin, pure lips and these quiet eyelids of peace that said a devastating thank you. Outside, the shiny night brought suffocating loss and almost sweet reunion with the world. New Cross was still there and the street lamps still spewed light. Newfound smarting pressure and peculiar guilty relief whipped and spiralled around my body, shying from the fuzziness of my head.

When Daddy wasn’t coming home anymore it was all different - screams and confusion, crisis, tragedy and the unexplained, ubiquitous ‘red tape’ that apparently was all. Endless telephone conversations with countless people were overheard; whole rooms filled with cellophane, carnation and gypsum; three in a bed, cuddles and tears and sobbing and heaving; shock and utter pain. Even before this was death - Granddad‘s disappearance bore the same label but contained only confusion. Not understanding why I couldn’t wear my red pinafore dress didn’t stop me from dancing with relatives in my Auntie’s dining room. Absence was present but I couldn’t feel its cold.

The first day without Mummy was all daffodils and yellow bed sheets and a peculiar aching sunny confusion. It seemed like spring was commanding strength. I had cried desperately for a week beforehand and at this point, I stopped. There was much less cellophane, carnation and gypsum; there was tragedy but it was the sort that slips in, accepted like nausea - not the superlative Shakespeare kind. Tragedy’s almost more tangible - this was real loss and I recognised it because I began to pretend I couldn’t feel it.

She's nailed it

2008-01-28T22:21:00.000Z

Lately I have been painting my fingernails almost daily. In a little round white leather case I keep close to me cotton wool, nail varnish remover, base coat, a file and polish. Keeping them neat makes me feel polished and changing the colour perks me up and styles me out.

My latest faves are a stunning shimmery red from OPI's Valentine's collection, gloriously entitled Log on to Love; Barry M's navy which is painfully untitled (only cruelly numbered, almost branded) and the battleship grey that Sophie Ellis Bextor wore on Buzzcocks. I think that might be one of Barry's, I must pick up a bottle asap.

I'd like my part time job to be official namer of varnishes - is there anything more wonderful than the fact that OPI called one of their beautiful blues Yoga-ta Get This Blue ["Make this deep dark blue your fashion mantra"]? Though when you look at the rest of the names of their India collection, the overall effect is - well, reductive, to put it mildly. Despite this, I am a total OPI convert. The brush is the perfect width when it splays out on your nail, and the drippy pigmented polish dries speedily and seems to be impatient-proof. The same cannot be said for my favourite NARS shade, Gimme Shelter, which tarnishes with fabric scuffs from my eggshell bedsheets, despite hours of drying. I blame base coat.

Of course, if I were a New Yorker, native or otherwise, I would not have a glimmer of this problem. Dashing Diva would be there for me, $10 impeccable manicures would be mine, mine, mine. Why haven't the Brits caught up? I think we'd rather be chipped, eccentric, a little bit grunge. Ew. The closest we get to a cheap mini mani on the go is Nails Inc, where they rarely think to suggest you pay before they paint, and where they hurry you out so you smudge. Shocking.

Bake Caking

2008-01-24T11:44:00.001Z

Baking cakes for me is the purest but most indulgent of activities. My larder can always be found to yield a few ingredients, which combined in the correct way (after consulting the gospels of Delia, Mary, Nigella or similar)will give rise to a confection either springy or stodgy, light or lardy, tasty, fattening and perfect with a cup of coffee.

I'm quite good at making cakes as well. They tend to emerge from the oven smelling and tasting pretty nice and I have just enough patience to measure and mix with almost-precision and plenty of true cooking love (which perhaps helps, who knows?). I don't know if it's in the blood - my mother was a cake baker extraordinaire, producing fabulous fancies the like of which I haven't tasted since. So from when I was small I could be found in the kitchen with a too large apron tied twice around my middle protecting my little body - t-shirt to toes - from batter splatter, flour on my nose and a spatula in my hand. From my Mum I learnt all those mystic techniques which fox people who haven't spent Sundays magicking up fruit cake, banana bread and Victoria sponge. How to sift, fold, whip, mix, line, grease, preheat - most of it's ingrained now, and I can definitely produce a few baked beauties with no recipe at all, and perhaps even without scales - just a tablespoon and a careful eye.

Cakes I make are for sharing and that's part of the pleasure. A squidgy carrot cake for colleagues, Christmas biscuits for cousins and most recently an 11 inch fruit celebration cake for a very special little boy's christening. The latter being a different bowl of mix altogether - cooking for a crowd (difficult), baking for an occasion (pressured), and getting it right (a matter of pride), all combining to mean this was my biggest bake challenge yet. There's something incredibly special about making an occasion cake though, and so different from whipping up a Sunday teatime sponge. The process involves planning and shopping and measuring, calculations of time, quantity, weight - and a generous pinch of artistic flair. It doesn't really matter if a batch of scones look wonky, are different heights, have the odd burnt raisin stuck to their sides - dust with a little flour and the look is home spun and charming. Not so with a christening cake. This lad is only going to get one and if the fondant is marked, the royal icing smudged, if you spell his name wrong or ice an incorrect date - it's not just an imperfection , it's a disaster. And the look needs to be professional - home baked charm just doesn't cut it.

For this particular christening there were two babies, two halves of a family and two cakes. What I had on my hands, was a bake-off. When the cakes were laid side by side in the swanky hotel, I realised with horror I was 'competing' with a pro. Two storeys tall, little Thomas' chocolatey tower was a lesson in cake perfection - baby blue, topped with an extravagant bouquet of shimmery shiny firework like decorations, baby building blocks spelling out the new Christian name, letters perfectly formed - a delight. I shuddered and glanced over to my cake bungalow, with its hand carved H for Harvey and wobbly white iced cross. But nonetheless, I was proud of it. There had been times when I thought I ought to run to M&S and get a Bob the Builder circular sponge. For example, when I poured the mix into the intricately lined tin and it barely crept a centimetre up the sides and I spent the entire cooking time nervously thinking it would turn out like an enormous square Garibaldi biscuit. When I was in the cake shop buying the board and I couldn't remember the size and everything looked too big or too small. When I found the perfect shade of eggshell blue for the fondant and then knocked both bottles of food colouring over the beech worktop and cream units with one fell swoop of my rolling pin. When I couldn't seem to figure out which nozzle to use and when Jane Asher's royal icing recipe read like a secret wartime code - in all these instances £14.99 and a picture of Pilchard on top all seemed rather appealing.

But in the end every one of those moments was worth it. Maybe my fruit cake could have been a little more moist and my 'January' a little more straight - but it could not have been made with more love. When Harvey Bear's Mummy sliced into the cake and a bevy of raisins and cherries lay beneath the almondy golden layer of homemade marzipan I was really pleased as punch that I had made that contribution - and ever so eager for another wedding, christening, 21st - if only so that I can have another bash.

Not that I'm sentimental about cakes or anything.

Rescue me Rojo

2007-08-29T12:25:00.000Z

Sleeping Beauty, La Scala Ballet, Royal Opera House, 26th July

Last month La Scala Ballet Company graced the stage of the Royal Opera House, gilding it with their version of Rudolf Nureyev’s choreographic reworking of Sleeping Beauty. I was in attendance on the Thursday evening; a welcome return (after a financially deficient absence they call student-hood) to the venue which, to me, embodies British ballet with all of its class and style. There is comfort in familiarity. Those grey-haired balletomanes; velvet-clad twelve year old wannabe Darcys; horsey young ladies with their giraffe necks and Chanel watches – all are still in attendance. The smoked salmon sandwiches still taste as good, and that atmospheric odour in the auditorium remains the same.

Tonight, however, there’s no Royal Ballet, as La Scala take over the reins. I miss them, finding little solace in a company that appears before me like an European charlatan, a poor relation of what I am used to. The Royal always endow their productions with a certain class – an understated contemporary elegance which strikes the right note between tradition and sophistication. Nothing of the like from the Italians, whom I expected to epitomise understated style. Despite the overwhelming charm of their work I am still left feeling a little like I am watching a regional production, a version of a ballet through the eyes of someone who has never seen one before. Everything is overdone, to the extent I feel I don’t see anymore, and the magic is obscured by the Baroque gilt.

The dancing is there, of course, and moments shine through – but more than anything it is Tamara Rojo who pulls focus, like a masterpiece in a gaudy frame. Her movement is divine – this is ballet as it should be, with no tell-tale joins between the steps, no cracks in the façade which all too often fracture the fairytale illusion. Rojo’s milky limbs shine through and the polite tapping of pointe shoes that was the rest of the company simply receded into insignificance. A premium prima, Rojo’s momentum swept the corps under the carpet and single-handedly saved the evening for me.

Sartorial scribbling

2007-07-19T18:30:00.001Z

I have long wanted to write about style. Wait, not style – fashion. Shoes, handbags, socks, gloves, a scarf – let me talk you through them, tell you how and tell you why. But can I? Should I? Despite almost enrolling in London College of Fashion's fashion journalism MA, covering fledgling fashion shoots at university and being endlessly absorbed in fashion magazines, devious doubt has kept me shy of that world. Don't you have to be explosively different to merit a role where it is your job to tell other people how to dress? Tirelessly glossy and immaculately groomed, always with the correct hemline and yet in possession of something extra - that zha zha zhu that means you turn heads in the street now and in later life means you are so imprinted on the style consciousness that you are written about in raptures: even your funeral is eulogised in Vogue. I refer, of course, to Isabella Blow.

Not everyone can be Issie, but can you be presumptious enough to make sartorial suggestions in inky permanent print when your tights have a hole in them and all your sandals are last summer's? The doyenne of UK fashion press, Alexandra Shulman, recently wrote in The Guardian that she doesn't enjoy staring into the mirrors at Vogue House – but the blame falls more on the apalling light than her heavy brows and round face, which by now she can stand. Besides, it's easier to see faults in others than to correct faux pas in yourself. The best fashion journalists possess a self-deprecating humour that chimes with British women's insecurities and welcomes them into the bosom of not always getting it right, but having lots of fun trying. Serendipitous style successes are part of the joy of clothes, and far more achievable and wonderful than a constant regimen of perfect outfit mongering. Joyful Jess Cartner Morley writes happily about how to dress and tells us what to do in a sing-song voice, so that we don't mind at all – the nursery school teacher of the fashion press. The Guardian show a snap of her in all her glory – like a flashcard of style – perhaps to demonstrate, with an imaginary curtsey, that she does practice what she preaches. Not for her the angrily scribbled fashion prescriptions of the Grazia team – now there's a gang of editorial angels who agree with Project Runway's Heidi Klum – "In fashion, you're either in, or you're out."

But often it's nice to be told what to do. I have enough decisions to make at home and at work. If Vogue tells me that I'm to wear a beret this Fall, I'll happily dig an old one out of my closet, mine through eBay for a pre-season steal, or keep my beady eye on the high street for the first jewels of the new season. Probably, I'll do all three. But certainly, I'll laugh at anyone who believes this funny thing called fashion is serious. It's wonderful, sublime, creative, life-changing, hilarious and a beauty – but truly important? Perhaps not. Humour, here is key – and so if I do ever find myself in Hanover Square, ordering a coffee before an interview – (I'm not double barrelled so I suspect this is unlikely) – I will bear this in mind and strive to always write about clothes in the most English of ways (see Jess, and see Hadley Freeman). That is to say, with a liberal smattering of irony, as much wit as I can muster, an awareness of the fabulous fun fashion is – and one eye on the weather.

Team Thailand part III

2007-06-25T15:30:00.000Z

Birthday chez Bangkok

The next day dawned upon 14th May, Miss Custard's twenty second birthday, and despite a late and disturbed Bangkok night's sleep, Misses G and D were up and ready to join the birthday girl for a morning swim. An overcast Bangkok sky provided a grey canopy above; despite this some classy fellow Brits were polka-dot bikini clad, armed with cans of Heineken and optimistically laid out on loungers. Very willing to ruin the sophistication which we were attempting to assume, we sought to ignore the intricacies of their conversation, and as Kate pleaded, "Sam, be sophisticated, we're in the rooftop pool," perhaps she was speaking to more people than one!

Back chez us, we donned birthday suits and hastily wrapped our makeshift presents and cards before we all assembled downstairs and piled into more technicolour taxis. Crepes and Co was our destination. Having been recce'd par Chloe, we knew this was a surefire bet for a brilliant brunch; but nothing could have prepared us for the quality and quantity of breakfast foods that we were to consume that morning. Over pancakes, tea, eggs, toast, croissants, juice, bagels and more, we heard travelling tales from taxis in India to waterskiing in Sri Lanka, Taj Mahal adventures and hostel horrors. "When we were in..." became a tagline - but far from tiring us with anecdotal evidence, these stories only increased our thirst for travelling and keenness to get down to the islands where we hoped our pseudo-trav times would increase in authenticity and adventure.

Suitably replete, we felt more indulgence was in order. Three of our party piled through a bright and breezy doorway, and were encouraged into a bliss of relaxation from some expert Thai massaging hands. Birthday Girl and I crossed the street past some chic interiors stores and scrumptious treat street sellers and into a softly lit haven, complete with candles, lilies and pure white-clad therapists. Our feet were those most deserving of attention after a Spring of too early flip-flops on the tube, and attention they got. Tootsies suitably preened, we tiptoed back to our buddies and then taxied back to Buddy. Some decamped to True, as Madam M and I had a catch-up in a dimly lit hotel room, gossiping as we watched the rain thunder outside.

Finally we admitted defeat and realised we would have to brave the bad Bangkok weather if we were ever to enjoy a coffee and cake at everyone's favourite internet café. Watching the sheets of water from a doorway of safety, we spied travs and tourists in various stages of being drenched and spent ten minutes or so critiquing the fashions of aforementioned people-watched people. Same Same ... But Different t-shirts are clearly in this traveller season and while flip-flops are standard issue, they are treacherous wear in thunderous conditions, as many Kho San dweller found as they squishily sashayed down the soggy street. Eventually we gathered up our courage, and swiftly skipped through the tropical shower to the warmth, dryness and beauty of True - a king amongst internet cafés. While sipping coffee and making contact with the UK, a plan was concocted for that evening. Lonely Planet raved about a little joint named The Pickle Factory, which sounded simply perfect for some birthday jollity, so we settled on that, Kate rather relishing (pun intended) the prospect.

After glamming up to a suitable degree we, once again, assume tried and tested taxi teams and pile into the vibrant vehicles. Determined not to experience SupperclubGate II, we come armed with maps and have a Soi in mind - but a wild goose chase seems to be unavoidable in this town of lost taxis. We loop around again and again, up and down streets and sois, never managing to happen upon this, presumably mythical, restaurant. Finally we decide to pay up and hop out, giving up on this pickle place - a riverside meal is the plan B that we settle for. Softly lit, with a waterside aspect, our chosen place is full of Thais and choc a bloc with shabby chic furniture, but as time ticks on I cannot help but think of our early start and that bad other girl kicks in, complete with indiscriminate sulks and tired tetchiness, possibly only alleviated by the swanky Del-boy-esque drink Sam is served ["I'm never drinking orange juice any other way"]. Companions, consider this an apology...

Team Thailand - part II

2007-06-12T21:49:00.000Z

Sunday night, and rather than holy we go hippie - to the Hippie Bar, Khao San, for dinner and cocktails. We are herded upstairs, through the bohemian hideaway that is Hippie, decorated with an array of retro artefacts, filled with hip Thais and prettily lit. Heaving a vintage fridge out of the way a young gentleman named Toy (as in Toy Story, not as in Toy boy, we are informed) pushes a few mosaic’d tables together and our crew of eight settle down to menus and toast our mojitos - it’s Kate’s birthday eve, and we’re wishing her a happy one.

We gobble up our food, giggle at the sign on the toilet door [who has the picture?] and get ready to depart - but not before the return of Toy, who is rather worse for whiskey and eager for introductions. We go round the table - the Sam doppelgangers produce slight confusion, but Toy has no worries with one name. Ben sticks out his hand,
“Ben,” he smiles – Toy’s eyes light up,
“Ahhh, Benjammin Marten!” he exclaims. Ben’s face is the picture of confusion and suspicion, but it’s not a set-up - this seven is innocent. It’s a popular name, Toy insists, and we leave in a mix of bemusement and hilarity.

Armed with a semi sort of idea as to which Soi we need to head towards, we begin to psyche ourselves up for Bed Supperclub. Squeezing our number in to a couple of cabs we speed through Bangkok, leaving tuk-tuks languishing in our wake, one hot pink car racing against another painted green and custard yellow. Up and down the streets of the city we drive, swinging a few u-eys and trying more than a few different streets.

Eventually our taxi arrives at Bed - a remarkable shaped building, polar white with the glow of neon and the faint throb of some hardcore sounds leaking through the walls. We hop around on the forecourt wondering where our counterparts can be. Just when we think we might have to seek out a pay phone, the car pulls up, and several of our stressed buddies tumble out; Ben is arguing with the driver about the fare, and eventually gets out without leaving too much of Kitty behind. STA Travel describes Bed in glowing terms: “a unique combination of upscale restaurant, club, art gallery, theatre and stage merged into one.” With these words ringing in our ears we troop up to the besuited bouncers, all but ready to party. But not so fast - STA neglect to mention that travs ain’t welcome here and our flip flops exclude us from the action.

We can’t quite believe the bad luck but refuse to give up on the night, so we hit a joint nearby. Up on the mezzanine (seemingly our storey of choice) we survey the scene - more staff than customers, the red and white clad dancers-come-barmaids displaying acres of childlike flesh and attempting to gyrate Beyonce-style – despite the fact there is no booty in sight. Not that I’m jealous of these scarlet sirens! Post Supperclub-gate we head to a Khao San venue, dance a little, drink a lot. *And I'm on tonight / You know my hips don't lie / And I'm starting to feel it's right / All the attraction, the tension / Don't you see baby, this is perfection... * Thank you Khao San, and goodnight.

Team Thailand - part I

2007-06-10T17:13:00.000Z

Buddying up in BKK

Arriving in Thailand I expected to have a little shock - a more than tiny jolt as I landed slap bang in Asia. But the West has come East: the plush marble and sleek surroundings of BKK’s newest airport heralded our arrival and proved to be a precursor to the Western elements which pervade most of this city. It would be easy to jump in a silver Mercedes, speed into the city centre, stay at a Mandarin Oriental and never have to take a break from your daily skinny caramel macchiato – but this is probably a way of exploring that is better best left to the business class bunch.

Venturing away from these pricey looking automobiles we lugged our backpacks downstairs and grabbed a hot pink taxi, beautifully adorned with photos and ornaments. As the Tiger Balm ads whizzed past the window and we weaved in and out of vehicles and lanes, a text came through to my mobile; our flashpacking pals were installed at a lusher-than-travellers-deserve hotel on Kao San and were eagerly awaiting our arrival. Despite the hot and sticky leather seat, I wriggled with excitement in between Kate and Sam, and clapped my hands with glee - less than 30 minutes and our crew of 8 would be assembled.

Crazy taxi driver number one soon turned into Kao San, and after almost mowing down several travs and a small Thai child, we were soon within 400 yards of Boots and the sign which signalled the route to a well earned shower - the divine Buddy Lodge. Trudging past a giant model of Ronald Mcdonald, [palms together Thai style] we attempted to check-in - but the staff don’t get on so well with our European names, and so we put in a call to our Buddy-wise buddies. My announcement of our arrival was greeted by a screech - “Sophieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” - and very soon Megan appeared, tanned and gorgeous, with a big smile spread across her face. Charlie followed, and after a while, Chloe; later, Ben - all tanned and be-flipflopped, glowing from the heat and brimming with stories we were yet to hear.

We got a taster of their travels so far, that evening. Fighting past the braids, fakes and drunks, Chloe led the way off Kao San (phew) and down a couple of winding streets to a tiny and gorgeous family run Thai restaurant. Eight Singhas were ordered, and a stunning starter was served. Tea leaves were filled with roasted coconut, lime, green chilli, peanuts, ginger, red onion and dried shrimp, then dipped in a gloriously hot sauce. The food tasted better with friends, and the stories were funnier with Singhas. I drunk up the tales, from Chloe’s dream of India, to the travelling triumvirate’s Ko Pang Gnan mare, as we giggled and gasped our way through to the early hours, and finally, thankfully, sunk into white linen framed sleep.

The next day we all (excepting Ben, whose Thai tummy prevented such adventure) piled onto a Chloe-chartered longtail and explored the backwaters of the city. Fighting off enormous grey fish, tourist-money hungry Thai ladies, not to mention a commodo dragon, we managed to take a few snaps, drink up the culture and clamber out, bespattered with river water and tummys rumbling. Ricky’s Coffee beckoned; capps and omelettes were ordered and we watched the cooking unfold from above, as three women performed an almost choreographed dance around the kitchen, producing culinary perfection with not a hiccup, and then balancing a tray and climbing up the ladder-like staircase with gymnastic skill.

Another taxi and our first tourist attraction - the Grand Palace. We had worn the wrong attire for this - our shorts shocked and our shoulders provoked. After a visit to a small shack like building we emerged looking rather sexy - but suitably dressed to view an array of golden buddhas and an even more varied bunch of beautiful looking tourists - gentleman in purple skin-tight pants anyone?

After a little culture came a little shopping. Megan, Charlie and Ben weren’t able to stay away from Star Movies for too long, and so they trooped back to Buddy and we Skytrained it over to Chatuchak market. A map almost as large as Chloe charted the vast area over which the market was spread. Colour coded in fabulous fluorescent shades, we were forced to limit ourselves to just one area - funnily enough, we chose fashion. We purchased accessory after accessory and sighed as we realised the child-sized shorts were unlikely to even come close to our English-sized hips. The Sams dragged their heels and mused over some cheap tees - and then after some ice teas and shakes, we grabbed a cab, 5 in a bed style, and lay all over one another on the long trip home.

[Images: Sam Battams and Kate Coman, 2007]

Maybe it's Maybelline

2007-06-03T18:12:00.000Z

Have you noticed them around? They’re everywhere. They’re underground, undiscussed abusers, and they need help.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the more layers of mascara you apply, the more womanly you are, and the more likely you are to bag a man in want of a wife (and hopefully in possession of a good fortune). My acerbic Austenism is intentional, of course... Mascara abusers are a special breed – in general, their eyes already pop (as Tyra Banks would say) and their lashes possess natural god-given flutter. And yet, they still feel the need to apply tubes full of mascara, coating each tiny hair with lashings of the gloop, top and bottom, corner to corner, until each blink is like opthalmic weight-lifting.

Spiderly lashes are one thing, bestowed on the wearer by matt black tubes of MAC Zoom Lash, and accompanied by a nude, matt lip and designer outfit. But this is the tarantula look, and it is a definite no-no. If you’re an offender/addict/beauty-junkie gone wrong (you know who you are – your other addictions probably include pink and st tropez) then please – step away from the Maybelline, and allow the young man with his pockets full of good fortune to gaze into morning fresh eyes, and not drag-act-ready make up encrusted peepers.

Going commuter crazy - a rant

2007-06-03T18:03:00.000Z

As a recent graduate and newbie nine to fiver, commuting is a new entry in my top ten things to complain about. In fact, it is awarded the top spot, going straight in at number one. Until some eminent scientists somewhere figure out a way of teleporting me to work, and until I snag a multi-million pound city-style bonus and bag a chauffeur (both about as likely as each other) I must stick to public transport methods of trekking across London.

My bed is in East London and my desk is in the West; so I must make my daily pilgrimage and do so with as much patience and piety as I can muster. Both are difficult to find within one’s soul at 8am on a windy Wednesday, when all District line trains are cancelled and there are no seats left on the bus (a bus that may not even be headed in the right direction as far as you can tell.) There are many tests of faith along the way. A 7.52 train which may as well be renamed the 7.56; the cityworker and his crappy earphones that are leaking the tinny tune of his dubious music choice throughout the carriage; the two old women squawking in your ear about the state of the nation (all this fuss about the environment is a storm in a teacup, apparently) ; the bobble-hatted man who curtly asks you to move down the train and then almost knocks you over before you can pick up your handbag; not to mention the stifling heat that envelops you in its artificial warmth and makes you want to rip off your cashmere sweater and throw it out of the window onto the tracks, regardless of how many weeks of torture you had to endure to pay for it.

All of these trials and tribulations are there to try your patience: but the test is not whether you get internally agitated – that is a given, and even complaining is a required activity. The real benchmark is whether you can hold in all that aggression and remain remarkably restrained and collected, in that beautiful, essentially British way. Commuting is a test of endurance – forget half an hour on the treadmill pretending not to be out of breath in front of all those toned and honed gym bunnies; the real stamina test is whether you can keep yourself from hitting the lady who sits on your coat and won’t budge, or the guy who leaps on to the train at the last moment, jams the doors and leaves delayed devastation in his wake. If you flip, you’re the crazy lady who can’t cope. If you smirk, you’re just plain crazy. The only thing you can do is keep it all inside, stick your nose in your book, and giggle, writhe, seethe and laugh, completely unknown to your fellow rat-racers.

There’s one up side to the nightmare journey of course; compared to those waking horrors, when you finally get to work, bum on seat, eyes to the screen – by comparison it’ll all seem like a dream.

Words

2006-05-30T13:02:00.000Z

I must must must explain the title of this blog, before I go any further. There was a young girl, named Rachel Corrie - an American aid worker who died, tragically, at a very young age. I won't explain her story here, I haven't got the right words. But I will say I went to see a play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, which does tell her story with power, respect and intimacy, and in her own words (emails, letters, diaries). One scene sees Rachel referring to herself as 'that bad other girl', lounging in a messy room, day dreaming and writing - in this aspect, I saw myself in Rachel! I hope she wouldn't mind me borrowing her words (what else are words for?). Please do read about her story, if you want a rare taste of what is important in the world. And go and see the play if you get even a glimpse of a chance. It's possibly the best piece of theatre I have witnessed. These links should help:

http://www.rachelcorrie.org

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060403/weiss

http://www.mynameisrachelcorrie.co.uk/

Spanking New

2006-05-30T12:21:00.000Z

Words pile up in me like a traffic jam, but, of course, presented with blank page [or indeed, a blank box] the words decide they'll stay inside.

A blog is ultimate freedom - no guidelines, no rules. And that freedom is almost too much. Because I can say anything, I really have nothing to say. Except of course, i actually have a lot to say.

I'll start with ten facts about myself which might give some background to anything I might happen to write in the future.

One: I'm twenty, nearly twenty-one.
Two: I'm female
Three: I have just finished university
Four: I can only wish to be moral and creative.
Five: I work hard at life, making sure it's fun and stylish, as well as successful.
Six: My friends and family mean the world to me, but I know I'm alone.
Seven: I like doing stuff, and I like documenting stuff even more.
Eight: This blog is for writing . . .
Nine: . . . but you can read it if you want.
Ten: I don't like reducing things, so I'll stop here.