A Pretty Face

2011-12-13T22:18:00.002Z

why maybe i should start avoiding my haven

2011-04-02T15:00:00.003+01:00

LIfe is hectic right now. This morning was the first time in about a month I hadn't been woken up involuntarily (alarm clock, shaken body). Nevertheless, I woke up at 9. My body clock is that unused to a lie-in. This is the main reason why I haven't been blogging, or writing for leisure, or doing anything else creative, because when I'm not working or dashing or something, I'm lying in a zombie-like state on Facebook or some other unproductive activity.

Anyway that's not really related to this post, apart from the fact that it means I have also basically stopped any semblance of 'creative shopping', which I see as combing through vintage and charity shops, or spending hours online looking for the best deal, or wandering across unexpected jewels at a market or boutique. It just requires too much effort.
But maybe my bank account would be better off I made shopping for myself a little harder. Instead, this past month, I have only been to the shops twice, and both times I could not be bothered to actually have to move from shop to shop so I just went to Selfridge's. That was today and the day of my last post. Surely that in itself has to be some testament to the ability of this shop to inspire me, or something. Never mind that I cannot afford 99.9999% of the items in this store. Surprisingly, considering its elite image, there remains a 0.00001% (I think the maths there is right...) of items which are exactly what you'd find on the high street, only they're laid out more beautifully, with more helpful staff, and air conditioning, and toilets, and space, and food.

Hence perhaps why I can't help but find that one thing I've been looking for for years on end every time I go. Last time, it was the holy grail of trench coats.

My trusty trench in action, marching and protesting its little heart out last Saturday.

And today, Minnetonkas. Overpriced, maybe, but when there are only three pairs left and two of them are your two possible sizes and one of them fits perfectly, and last year's summer shoes all fell apart/got lost (don't ask), you can't really say no, can you?

But now I think it's time to stop. I seem to have confused buying clothes for the summer and saving money for the summer. Plus, I was meant to write an essay today.

haven

2011-03-06T19:15:00.002Z

Holly Golightly: I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is but I know what it is like. It's like Tiffany's.

Paul Varjak: Tiffany's? You mean the jewelry store.

Holly Golightly: That's right. I'm just CRAZY about Tiffany's!

Is Holly Golightly a selfish, frivolous, materialistic high-class escort? Maybe. Is she impossibly beautiful, slim and glamorous? Yes. But when she comes out with words like the quote above, I can't help but relate to her. That's how I felt today as I stepped out of the windy streets and into the warmth of Selfridges. My yellow paper bag may have contained Topshop, but with its magic powers I could have asked to try on a million pound diamond necklace if I wanted to.

librarian

2011-02-21T15:37:00.005Z

For some reason, boys always seem to tell me that I'm dressed like a librarian, and contrary to what they are trying to do, I don't get annoyed, because to me it's a compliment. I love books. I am going to spend three or more years studying exclusively books. Why wouldn't I want to be paid to live in a library? I take great pride in my tortoiseshell glasses, shirts and brogues Still, I also think it's a pretty stupid thing to say, because I don't know any librarians who actually dress like this, and I don’t think there is a librarian uniform, but if there were one it would probably consist more of brightly coloured coats, Marks and Spencers v-neck jumpers and calf-length skirts.

When I stumbled across this website (appropriately titled 'The Literary Gift Company, it reminded me of the book group I went to which refused to be named 'book club', instead calling itself 'Literary Society') it definitely wasn't to my usual 'librarian nerd' taste. I like classy, not crafty. But the true non-ironic nerd deep inside me was charmed by

and

(actually nearly cried when I saw that this one was out of stock)

and

and my personal favourite....

UPDATE - EVERY SECOND I DON'T OWN THIS MY HEART BREAKS A LITTLE BIT MORE:

elemental

2011-01-29T13:16:00.006Z

Most adults I know don't like to wear yellow gold. It's quite a polarising colour. Is it an elegance thing? Is yellow too loud, colourful and trashy? Is silver more tasteful? I personally am attracted to anything shiny and sparkly, and gold tends to sparkle more.

I also don't have an issue with mixing metals, which I know a lot of people do. Life's too short to care that the silver buckles on your shoes clash with your gold earrings and the brass zip on your bag.

But to me, the important thing is balance. It's difficult to articulate because it's quite a visual and often instinctive thing, but sometimes the colours just feel wrong. Those last five words took about ten minutes to type, no joke. I was typing then backspacing then typing then backspacing, trying to think of specific examples, then trying to come up with a general rule, which just serves to prove that I would never make a very good fashion writer. Anyway. It's just nice to have options. A gold watch you can swap the silver one out for if it 'feels wrong'. Multiple bags and shoes with different buckles. I'm all good on that front. My wardrobe is plentiful. Like I said, I don't discriminate.

On the jewellery front, I had a gap. A long silver necklace shaped hole in my life. This christmas I finally caved after lusting after a gold necklace with my initial on it since I first saw it approximately three years ago. I was (and still am) in love. My mum couldn't understand why I was so desperate for a new necklace when I had just bought this one. But accessories aren't boyfriends. I also just bought a pair of heels after obsessing over the heel issue for even longer, and I'm already feeling a flat-shaped hole in my life too.

In a moment of shopping serendipity a beautiful but overpriced necklace was reduced by 75% and I grabbed it. My friend loved it too. I felt bad that I was taking away something so beautiful from her life. So I proposed we get friendship necklaces. Only, she likes her jewellery as loud as possible. She got the gold version.

It feels ironic that in a post where I struggled more than ever to say what I wanted to, and ended up rambling on for quite a while to manage it, I could have just said everything I wanted to with some photos. So for those of you who don't like reading (in which case I've just realised you'll never get to read this), the above post in pictures:

My cork noticeboard is meant to be for important pieces of paper, but it seems to have been invaded by necklaces and a huge map of Snowdonia.

problem?

2011-01-25T23:44:00.006Z

Today, while adding my newest purchase to the nail polish box, I decided it would be fun examine its contents and to count all my polishes.

My first reaction was wondering if maybe I had a problem. I decided that I did. But the definition of this problem evolved from

I have far too many nail polishes

to

They're all the same colour! I have two true reds, two dark reds, two pastel purples, two greys and two hot pinks. Why?

to

Most of them are probably/maybe dried out anyway

to

I don't have any deep pinks, or light blues, or dark greens, or polish with a crackle effect. I need to buy more nail polish.

Yeah, I think we need to go back to problem number one.

EDIT: so after I posted this photo, I realised there were two more polishes that weren't in the nail polish box but the make-up box. THERE MAY BE MORE.

EDIT EDIT: weird that it happens to be a blog post about nail polish that has inspired so much thought, anyway, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and came across this post from 2008. Back in the day when I thought I had an impressive collection. Oh, the innocence.

painful gain?

2011-01-20T19:12:00.003Z

A couple of months ago, after a particularly rough night out, I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to stop drinking. That following Friday, however, I was invited to a pretty fancy party. I had nothing to wear and I was trying to resist the temptations of liquor. But then I found a nice shimmery gold dress in a local boutique and so I did my hair, put on my make-up and decided to go. Then it was time to choose the shoes. This part was not difficult. I only had one pair of heels, and this outfit and venue demanded heels.

So I wore my gold dress with sparkly blue heels. No-one looks at your feet anyway, right?

Maybe so, but my feet were the only thing on my mind that night as I danced away, alcohol-free, and the pain in my feet steadily grew worse and worse. Here's a few things I learnt that evening:

1) Dancing in heels hurts when your nerve endings are not numbed by alcohol.
2) Drunk people do not have the courtesy to avoid stepping on your toes.
3) Drunk people are not funny when you are sober.
4) The ground is actually really cold if you try to walk home shoeless in October, sober.

After that night, two things happened:

1) I stopped wearing heels.
2) I started drinking again.

So for the past few months I have been stomping around in boots and brogues, happily dancing away while still painfully conscious that this outfit would look a lot better with heels. I have spent hours scouring internet websites and sale racks for a suitable pair, but with feet that hate heels as much as mine, yet a mind with a taste for spindly stilettos, this search has been fruitless.

Finally, I found the perfect pair. They were approximately double my budget, and they were in the sale. But they were also beautiful and I bought them. The shoe gods must have been getting fed up of my unladylike footwear, because they blessed me with a sales lady who is not very good at mathematics, and further reduced the shoes' price.

I love them. And they are called 'Carbonara'. Be still, my beating heart.

There's just a slight problem. A problem entitled 'the bunion and extra half size of my left foot'. A problem which squishes and cramps my abnormally long left toes. But, I've done my research, and the luxuriously soft leather of these shoes seems perfectly suited to a shoe-stretching spray. I could also use the spray on the slightly too small toebox of my other beautiful left shoe. If that doesn't work, I will fill myself up with some vodka and brave the pain.

pretentiosity

2011-01-09T00:09:00.007Z

Being pretentious is a bit of a catch-22 sometimes, isn't it?

The word itself implies an act, a false face, pretending to be something you are not. So can you even be pretentious if you hold your hands up and admit it? Because I am self-aware enough to recognise I bear a worrying number of symptoms of the typical pretentious student. I have the tortoiseshell frame glasses, am off to do an English degree next year, but not before a holiday around Europe on trains through cities with cultural landmarks but more importantly lots of bars. For god's sake, I even bought a tweed elbow-patched blazer the other week, and THAT wasn't enough. I had to replace the existing buttons with gold buttons too (top left).

But I think the final straw came last week when I went to pick up the developed photos from my disposable camera last weekend. Yes, an old school Kodak disposable. The first half of the photos are from my recent holiday to Istanbul. I could always plead the excuse that I forgot my digital camera, but I won't deny that I took secret joy in trying to get arty angles of the authentic side of the city - no cheesy posing in front of buildings for me!

I want the protests, the noise, the unposed passersby (except for when they get in the way of my carefully composed portraits). I want the multi-layered landscape.

That's until I got bored half-way through the film and forgot about the camera, until New Years Eve. The next half of the film is a sequence of drunkards pulling more and more stupid faces while dancing to hideous noise. But it's all OK, because our New Year's Resolution is to read Ulysses.

shameless

2011-01-01T17:40:00.004Z

I have lots of exciting new acquisitions which I want to share with you all, but that will have to wait as today I am going to be a bit shameless.

In order to make room for my new stuff, I have decided to not only clear out as I do periodically anyway, but also try to sell my old stuff for the first time. Who knows how it will go as I am totally inexperienced in this field. Anyway, I currently have a dress up for sale which I love love love and posted about on one occasion on this blog, but have never worn. I am probably going to add a couple of bags and bits and bobs over the next few days so I'll let you know if I do. But please have a look at my current listing because I have this fear that it is just going to lay there buried under all the other shiny and professional listings by hardcore ebayers.

CLICK HERE

Update:

click HERE too! And here and here and here.

imposter

2010-12-20T12:26:00.003Z

So, I have either reached the final frontier of fashion blogging...

or I must relinquish my total and finally admit it: I am a total fashion imposter.

This is what I wore on Saturday night:

Time to bow out?

wringing the words out

2010-11-21T19:32:00.005Z

The only excuse I have for not blogging right now is that I am currently finding the formation of sentences highly painful. This may be to do with the 3000 word essay I am working on?

Much like the way my tooth-ache has prevented me from eating hard chocolate, but simply led to copious mugs of hot chocolate as an alternative, the pain arising from writing proper sentences seems to have led to experimentation in the form of badly punctuated poetry.

political

2010-11-10T23:22:00.004Z

I rarely get political. Even when the elections come down, I only vaguely know where my principles lie, and although I get concerned about social issues, I don't feel knowledgeable enough to voice my opinions. I make an effort to be aware of the different policies, everything just seems like empty promises. I supported the Lib Dems at the last election, because I liked their policies best, but a few months later it is shockingly blatant how little a policy means. One the one hand, this reminded me of how much I hate politics.

But this is really pissing me off.

I didn't attend the march today, and I really, really, really wish I did. This is something that will not (for once, I am too old) affect me but I feel like it was a bullet that literally brushed past me, and I really care. Violence is not the way forward and everyone I know who went seemed to approach it like a fun party, and I feel guilty for being responsible and not going. And angry. So of course violence is not the way forward, but this photo still just captures my mood perfectly:

Sometimes everything seems so wrong yet impossibly insurmountable that the only thing you feel you can do is TELL the world that it is wrong, even if you know it won't achieve anything, that it's not the way forward.

mine

2010-11-07T15:14:00.008Z

I have frequently charted my search for a functional bag. I considered a backpack, before remembering that I am nowhere near hipster enough to not look like a tourist in a backpack.

At the beginning of the academic year, I received this:

I convinced myself that I had not yet written about this big exciting purchase yet, the way I normally do straight away, because I hadn't had a chance to take a good illustrative photo. Whatever. I just took the photo you can see above, no repeats, and it is SOOC (straight out of camera), a low quality digital photo with absolutely no editing, cropping, anything.

The truth is that I have quite complex emotions towards this bag. Does that sound silly? Does it sound stupid that I can extrapolate huge emotions, relationships, shifts in style, and more, from the purchase of this one bag? Is it ridiculous to feel that I could write a whole thesis on one bag?

If I were to write the thesis, this post wouldn't be up on my blog before the bag had disintegrated into shreds. So I'll just present what the rough draft, the paragraph structure, of the thesis might have been.

1. Why spend £70 on a non-leather item?
My first desire for this bag arose from its function. The perfect size, shape and weight for a bag to lug around all my books, while maintaining style. But there are other bags that can do that. There are fakes that can do that. When I got this bag, it felt so special. I have very little experience in luxury brand names, but I have even felt their effect when carrying a Chanel shopping bag. When the bag is not simply a container but the item itself, it seems to be even more steeped in luxury, the gold-plated zips seems to take on an authentic golden sheen.

2. The process of the purchase
I didn't spend £70 on this bag. The short story is that my dad got his sister to get it at a discounted price from a large department store. The long story involves family conflict, divorce, and when someone asks me how much I paid, I can say nothing, because it was an unabashed guilt-trip gift - which I do feel bad about now.

The bag took a long time coming, and the first time I met my father to deliver it, his sister had forgotten to remove the security tag, so back it went and it was another week before she got round to sorting it out and I got it again. So it was a drawn-out process, especially if you factor in the years I'd been admiring its perfection from the corner of my eye.

3. The damage
The idealised perfection of this purchase made it seem somehow timeless. It seemed justified because it was the perfect university bag, so something that will carry me through the next three years. But within weeks, scratches and stains were appearing. At first, these stressed me out. Then I realised this is that kind of item you use, heavily, and that is why I originally wanted it. I wore it out in the rain. The scratches and the stains slowly merged and faded and vanished.

This is not a unique bag. But no-one else has my style, or my story. Like the scratches and the material, this bag seems to have somehow melded with me. I have extended to beyond the appearance and to what no-one else can see, but even the physical object has its own effects. The colour green is an important symbol of self-flattery and acceptance, to me. The strong aesthetic, slightly urban equestrian, combined with an item I wear every single day, represents the introduction of a constant in my otherwise schizo style. This bag is a book carrier, and I am a student. This bag is definitely mine.

I feel incredibly self-conscious writing this post. Trying to finish it off, I still feel a sense of ridiculousness in ascribing this much importance to just a bag. Has a new item ever led any of you into a thought-process like this? What conclusion did you come to?

a sample

2010-11-04T20:52:00.005Z

Back when I first started this blog, I quite frequently posted poems I'd written, or extracts from creative writing, either that I'd just written or more amusing pieces from my childhood.

I don't do this any more, not because the feedback I got was anything but wonderfully sweet and encouraging (because it was wonderfully sweet and encouraging) but because I rarely find myself writing creatively recently. It's either critical or autobiographical emotional outpourings, and I fear the first would bore you to death and the second would embarrass me to death.

The creative stuff I AM doing more of is reading poetry. I think reading poetry is a creative act, because unlike an episode of TV or a simple narrative, every reader brings a million elements to it which provides them with a personal experience of the poem. I'm not just talking about an emotional connection which can often come from a very short quote as well as a long poem, but the details you notice, the rhythm in your own ears, the different images and meanings which the same word can create in a mind made up of different life experiences, different pools of intellectual knowledge.

For that reason, I love reading poetry even if it's about old age, or murder, or a Tudor courtship, or any other experience totally alien to me. I don't think it would be very easy to enjoy much many pieces of poetry if you were searching for one of the great canonical masters of poetry, a dead white male, to put words in an order which feel like you should have written them.

But you still treasure the pieces that do. A sample:

FOR DESIRE

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look

- Kim Addonizio

--------------------------------------------------------

THE DEFINITION OF LOVE

My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And alwaies crowds it self betwixt.

For Fate with jealous Eye does see
Two perfect Loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her Tyrannick pow'r depose.

And therefore her Decrees of Steel
Us as the distant Poles have plac'd,
(Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac'd.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp'd into a Planisphere.

As Lines so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly paralel,
Though infinite can never meet.

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debarrs,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.

-Andrew Marvell

--------------------------------------------------------

From LYCIDAS (the last two sections)

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walk'd the waves;
Where other groves, and other streams along,
With Nectar pure his oozy Locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,
In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet Societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now Lycidas the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray,
He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay.
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

-John Milton

--------------------------------------------------------

I would love it if you shared a sample of your favourite poems with me. And if you would like, I would love to carry on posting up little samples of poems I love.

Note: some of you may find it amusing/shamefully nerdy to know that while I copied and pasted the text of these poems from sites I found on google search, I then went through the latter two in my original punctuation/spelling Penguin Classics poetry book to revert all the modernisations. Wow, I'm cool.

2010-10-31T15:47:00.003Z

This week I have lived in my Topshop pirate pants and, oh the shame, tracksuit bottoms. It's been that kinda week. But I on general principle despise sportswear, and my pirate pants were starting to need sewing/patching up and generally looking a little worse for wear.

I went on a bit of an epic search for an alternative, and came up with these.

I am NOT wearing them ironically with vertiginous heels and a £2000 blazer. I am wearing them slumped in a corner with the world's worst hangover, fuggs and a 'vintage' football shirt.

breath

2010-10-23T19:10:00.003+01:00

For the past week or so, a twitch in my left eye has been extremely irritating me. The fact is, I am experiencing the extreme fatigue of accumulated stress and lack of sleep. So one day I decided to go to sleep at 10PM, but I was still tired the next day, on which I reverted back to normal and went to bed past midnight. I know, it's all my fault really. A couple of days ago, I even tried cutting out caffeine, but my eye continued to twitch.

Today, the first day of my week-long break, after a night out last night, I woke up naturally at 9AM. I wanted to die. I was so tired.

Plus, I had a whole day planned. On the way there, I just closed my eyes, and when I arrived at my destination, I really didn't want to get out of the car. But, I did. And as soon as I got out of the car, my tiredness melted away.

I entered a world of luxury.

London is a strange city, where a stone's throw can separate vastly different worlds. But even more drastic, the London I live in is in fact separated by miles, and often feels like a different city.

In W1, everything is special. Everything is moneyed. Everyone is beautiful.

I tried to marvel at and find meaning in Damien Hirst's 'Poisons and Remedies'

Then I desperately needed to pee and so used the Claridge's toilets (I was tempted to take photos but wisely abstained). It was the most beautiful toilet I have ever used.

Then, the biggest treat, tea at Fortnum and & Masons (whose toilets nearly rival Claridge's).

And finally, a (genuinely) fascinating art installation at the White Cube Gallery (and more beautiful people to admire).

I felt rejuvenated. I got home, and went for an hour long run and when I finished I didn't feel tired. I think there must be some sort of fuel in beauty, either than or I'm still running on caffeine after abstaining for two days.

backwards and forwards

2010-10-22T00:03:00.003+01:00

I'm still trying to work backwards and catch up, but time keeps on moving forwards and new things keep appearing. It sort of feels like when you try to climb back up an escalator.

You see, I can't stop buying new things.

I don't know what it is, if I'm trying to fill a hole in my heart, if I feel like money is burning a hole in my pocket now I'm not in crazy summer spending mode, or if I am just noticing holes in my winter wardrobe and am in the mood to shop.

Actually, scratch that bit about needing stuff.

I just bought a yellow bag.(I was looking for a black bag)

interlude

2010-10-19T22:41:00.005+01:00

I have so many ideas for posts to write, but they all require illustration (i.e. photographs). Photographs which I currently cannot take because I arrive home in darkness and flash is not my friend.

So, for the moment, all I can post are memories of the sun. Memories of this summer, the strangest summer, or season, of my life. Maybe not even memories, more moments, which I barely remember passing. A summer of such intense feelings that they drown insignificant images. And now, these images have become connected to moments, thoughts, emotions and yet at the same time capture such a fleeting second. I can see them for their beauty, and that eases the memories.

definition

2010-10-15T16:46:00.003+01:00

I think I'm more of a winter dresser, in that in the winter I seem to start dressing more creatively. I have a few nice summer dresses, but apart from that my summer wardrobe is basically casual separates. Whereas, right now, I am shopping more, experimenting more, thinking about my outfits more.

Before this shift, I had a uniform: denim and a black top. I was expert at varying on this theme, with a hundred different style of jeans and black top. It was a tad dull and uniform-like, but also comfortable and failsafe. Right now, though, I don't think I've worn jeans for over a week.

Instead, my style's gone a bit mad. And I try to think about it, and analyse it, and come up with a definition, but I fail. Everyone around me, all of my friends, seem to have a perfectly defined style, while I wildly oscillate. While I am aware of my shifting moods, the thing which makes my undefined style all the more obvious is other people, and their comments.

I love wearing pink lipstick, because it makes my lips look less corpse-like, but it's not as high maintenance as red lipstick. I love wearing waist belts and fitted silhouettes because they flatter my in-and-out shape. This personal preference has resulted in what I feel like a vaguely 50s/60s style. But this is simply a vague impression, and the main reason I have pinpointed it is the offhand comments I have remembered. One friend said I looked like a girl in a 60s inspired band, I looked them up and she has long blonde hair (mine is short and red). He then said it was something about the collar on my dress. A collar which is not even real, but stitched on. I am sure that the inaccuracy of the details in my '50s' look would make a die-hard retro fan break out in hives: no-one wore crepe soles in the 50s!

Other times, at 7 in the morning, I will want to wear something baggy and therefore unconstricting, and so I will pair my flared pussy-blow blouse with an equally flared squared, and then I look like a member of the women's institute. That is not the intended look here, guys, and I don't appreciate the comparison.

Someone told me the other day that she has never seen me wear the same top twice. I don't know her very well, and I was a bit taken back. I never feel like I have very many clothes, buthen a highly clothes conscious male friend turned around and said 'you know, it's true, you have so many clothes'. I don't actually buy very much, but I also don't throw away very much, and when I was younger I had more time and money (to spend on clothes). As a result, my wardrobe is a wild mixture of old, new, and even older (passed on, handed down, borrowed), distinctive pieces neglected in a six month long black t-shirt and jeans phase and therefore totally familiar to me, but no-one else.

Today I received a lot of compliments, and I understood why. It is not that my outfit was particularly special, and if I posted it on here it would not create a huge response (in brief: loght grey jersey mini-dress, charcoal wool cowl neck jumper, black leggings, cinammon wool legwarmers under tall browny-grey boots, stripy wool navy and white scarf, khaki bomber, khaki Longchamps tote). But it was a style which mirrored their own. When I wear pink lipstick and fitted retro dresses, I am a million miles off from the 80s red-lipped, sparkly, baggy and short vintage of my friends. Wearing a bright skirt or dress that reaches my knees is an even more foreign notion, and makes me look 'old-fashioned', be it in a succesful retro combination, or a less sucessful librarian unchic. Short, uncolourful and casual: familiar, ergo 'really, really nice today'.

That's not to say I didn't like today's outfit; I did. I love the combination of the matching wool texture with the palette of a range of neutrals. I love being able to snuggle up a million layers. But for me, this is 'comfortable'. This is, 'I don't want to attract loads of funny comments about looking old-fashioned'.

Reactions shouldn't form my personal style. But they do, and they inevitably affect the way I feel about an item of clothing, and my overall style. On this ramble through my thoughts over the past few weeks, I seem to have wandered away from the original path of 'defined style', a tangent which I don't feel too guilty about as it is a pretty well-trodden path. But I also don't seem to have arrived at a destination, a decision about how I feel about the whole act of creative dressing. The only thing I do know is that I am enjoying the journey, and seeing what new ideas I arrive at.

2010-10-12T17:10:00.002+01:00

On Friday night, as I struggled to keep my eyes open and my brain engaged in wakefulness, I realised I couldn't remember the last time I had been free to do as I wanted, and not too tired to do it. Reading before bedtime is not an option when your eyes are forcing themselves shut...

I decided that the next morning I would go for a run for the first time in more weeks than I could remember.

It was painful, and short. But I felt so great afterwards.

Sunday I dedicated to reading (a fiction, for pleasure, how novel) and then in the evening, I went for a walk.

That is not to say that I am suddenly carefree and spritely: I am not. I slept 6 hours last night, and the night before. Hence, why although I decided that on Monday I would resume writing, I ran out of time and was a day late. Restoring the habits which practice makes natural isn't effortless, but I think it's important.

I can feel the joltiness in my writing, I am too unused to writing outside of the restraints of essay structure. But I'm going to do my best, and I'm going to work backwards, and hopefully as I reach the point where I stopped writing, I will get nearer and nearer the fluency I had then.

So.

Most recent purchases:

Never fear; I only ever wear them together when part of a Catholic schoolgirl in Gossip Girl ensemble, which is only rarely (and no, I am not putting a picture of that up on this blog for all to see - if any of you are still out there).

a london education

2010-09-15T19:37:00.005+01:00

I am currently working on finding all things London-related for an English essay. It makes me wonder how important it is when reading or watching or listening to something to be able to personally relate to it. I don't think it's that important. But here is another video which is completely hilarious to me, for how many people I know I can relate it to, and I do suspect that it is completely boring if you haven't come across this particular species of dickhead?

I keep on having ideas for posts I want to do but no time to do the writing or photos necessary. It's very frustrating.

goodbye summer

2010-09-01T20:29:00.005+01:00

Life has been so hectic this summer. I entered it dreading it because I had no idea what was to come. And now looking back I can see there is no way I could have predicted the events of the past month. How cryptic does that sound?? I wouldn't be able to start writing about everything, though, without suddenly sounding unbearably dear-Diaryish.

I've been on a bit of a rollercoaster, and it's been fun and it's been horrible but it has never been in between. And so, I am very very tired. Tomorrow, I start my last year of school and I go back into a routine. I will have more time to think, to just be. To not be caught in the act of doing, and to be able to process the moments that just zipped past. And in doing so, I will finally write and read and reflect and rest. Maybe I'll even write more and better blog posts? (Here's hoping).

The unwinding process begins. And for the first time in a long time I have time to just sit and waste an hour watching terrible TV. Isn't that wonderful?

MOAARR

2010-08-24T00:03:00.003+01:00

New nail polish. Crazy green. I had to apply two coats and a top shiny coat to make it look good because it was shitty £2.50, but, seriously, I think I have found my anti-depressant. I just look at it and I smile.

l'art

2010-08-17T10:54:00.004+01:00

In continuation of my summer of free entertainment, I have sought to become more cultured by going to all the free art exhibitions I can find. I love it because there is no educational motive or benefit as I don't study art or plan to study anything very art-related. I seem to be experiencing a mental block about doing any actual constructive work right now, so the lack of benefit is very helpful.

I apologise in advance for the pretentiousness of this post. As I have written, I do know very little about art at all, apart from whether I like something, and how it's making me feel.

Anyway, enough ponderings, back to the exhibitions. Every single exhibition I list in this post was free and I only have superlatives to describe them. They are also all still currently showing in London!

Jim Hodges at the Camden Arts Centre

A very small exhibition but wowow I was just blown away by the beauty of it. You know how much I love beauty, and the way it has the power to make you feel extraordinarily happy and then extraordinarily sad.

Picasso at the Gagosian

It's, well, Picasso. Being surprisingly lively and happy. I left this one feeling joyful.

The permanent collection at the Courtauld. Can I just ask: how have I not been here before?? I have lived in London my whole life, in a half an hour proximity to the stuff of kids' art books, like this:

and for God's sake, this:

And I was completely oblivious. There is also a lot of gothic and early renaissance stuff which I spent a few minutes peering out and trying to identify the saints, but you can skip over that! And a couple of temporary contemporary exhibitions too.

This sort of stuff makes me feel so fortunate to live in a city like London. It also leaves me confused as to how I could ever have been feeling bored here, or at a loss for what to do for free.*

*apart from any purchases I may have made from the shop or food I may have consumed in the café

cash drain

2010-08-15T20:16:00.003+01:00

Even if I haven't actually left the British Isles this whole summer, I have still managed to spend a lot of money.

Breakfast, lunch, coffee, dinner, parties, all suck up your cash like a selective black hole.

Falling into a dangerous addiction to a TV show leads to ill-advised boxset purchases which have not yet arrived!

Mainly, I seem to have suddenly rediscovered my ability to shop. Or maybe I just have a lot more time. I still only purchase on average one item out of every two shopping trips, but the trips have been upped to a couple a week.

I even decided to learn to cook properly, and spent a tenner on ingredients for my super special stir fry on Friday.

Basically, time is money and a lot of time means a lot of money.

Click here for a recap on what I was spending my money on a couple of weeks ago. Now envisage more of the same: a dress in exactly the same shade of purple as the nail polish, Mad Men season 3, a pretty blouse I needed like a hole in the head etc etc

I'm getting bored just writing about it. I can't imagine how you could enjoy reading about it. So instead I'm going to try something a little different. How can I carry on wasting my time, without spending any money doing it?

Entertainment
-Read more than the first page of the SIX books sitting on your desk which you received for your birthday.
-E-mail Amazon and ask them to refund your boxset because it is taking so long to arrive. Watch all the episodes online.

Shopping
-Shop your friend's clear-out piles! I discovered treasure in my family friend's trash : a beautiful pastel argyle Pringle cardigan. In another friend's clear-out pile, I also discovered a questionable light blue vest with leather straps and buckles for shoulder straps, but I'm thinking I can make it work.
-Remind your friends that they still haven't bought you a birthday present and they are almost a month late.
-Take your little sister shopping in the hope that your mum will thank you in the form of a pretty new top.

Consumable Goods
-Try to cook a meal out of ingredients already in the fridge. May be a bit of a challenge considering there are currently approximately four meals on my repertoire, but wasn't the whole idea to challenge myself anyway?
Prepare sandwiches or salads whenever I meet people for lunch. I have sunk to picnicking in Starbucks before so I don't see that this will be too much of a problem.
-Find guys to buy me drinks

Sorted

plunge

2010-08-06T10:05:00.003+01:00

I have been meaning to write a post for a while now, but whenever I purposefully decide to, I am stumped about what to say. There is plenty I could write about, and at the same time, none of it seems interesting or original enough, or right for an entrance to make after a two week absence.

So instead of choosing one of the vaguely interesting things I have watched, bought or done, I'm going to take the whole lot and put them all up here. I have pictures of a few. Some are from google search, some are carefully composed photographs, others are quick illustrative snaps. But anyway here is my mind blog of the past two weeks: everything I have thought I should post but not had the courage to.

Please pick up on anything that interests you and let me know if you want to know more, or, alternatively, just ignore the ones that don't.

This is what I climbed (x13) and I am still recovering.

My new favourite show, several years too late as always. I got the series 1 and 2 boxsets, zoomed through and am now aching for the third. In the meantime I can obsessively rewatch episodes and read this excellent style commentary.

New cardigan, needed like I need a hole in the head, but it has awesome elbow patches and it's that exact colour of green we talked about.

I lost a pair of shoes and broke a pair of shoes and replaced them with these. They make my feet look like Ronald McDonald's but what else is new. I needed these like a patient suffering from a disease which can only be cured by a hole in the head needs a hole in the head.

I wanted pastel purple. I bought this cheap bottle - £2.95. This incredible colour is anything but pastel.

I saw this last night. Hmmmmmmm.

2010-07-23T23:42:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note typed from my brand new iPOd touch, the Internet has been really dodgy hence my sorry absence. The wifi, touchwood seems to be temporarily cooperating so I am taking the opportunity to let you know I'll be absent for yet another week as I hike into the Internet-less beyond. Worry not, I can never abandon you completely!

draft

2010-07-19T22:36:00.003+01:00

It would appear I am barely blogging at all. My personal dashboard, however, tells a very different story. Drafts and drafts, half written blog posts, a few downloaded photos framed by some bullet point notes. Waiting to be finished until they are no longer relevant.

My university application, too, all in draft form.

The assignment you see peaking between the lined paper and keyboard: still in theoretical form.

My summer plans: a vague outline, ready to shift at any moment.

Things are slowly crawling towards a close, but they are still unfinished. Tomorrow, the final year of my childhood begins.

And yet my future is still all in draft form.

what a week

2010-07-13T11:07:00.004+01:00

This past week has not treated me well. None of it has been life-changing, but in the midst of it I really do feel like the universe did not want things to go right for me. PMT probably played a part, but that doesn't make it any better; in fact, it probably makes being unable to catch a single bus on time all week even worse. Other contributing, but not mitigating, factors include: overwhelming heat, the tail-end of the year, and pre-birthday malaise.

Here is the week epitomised:

My two and half year old purse broke. I subsequently lost my lunch card, some coins, and nearly lost my keys.

I bought a new purse on Saturday, only to find out that it was £6 cheaper online, minus travelling pain and costs. Sunday and Monday weren't much better.

Still, I need to resolutely STOP feeling sorry for myself. So I should factor in the 10% student discount I received, and the postage costs if I had ordered the purse online, and then see that my purchase actually worked out 5 pence CHEAPER than the online option (which you can find here). And I have a fabulous purse, which not only doesn't have a broken zip; it has surplus zips!

Yes, I have had a bad week, but the next week is going to be fabulous. This time next week it will be my birthday! And there will be joy, and presents, and cake.

(to make my next week even better, vote for me here!)

taking a leaf

2010-07-06T22:37:00.002+01:00

I find tooting my own horn pretty difficult to do at the best of times. So I really had to re-read some motivational posts from Wendy Brandes blog in which she shamelessly commands you to vote for her.

Vote for me!

(Please).

If I win I get to go to Paris and if I go to Paris I'll buy you all an Eiffel tower keyring, or something.

Are bribes allowed? I doubt it. I was joking, by the way. It's not like I have your home address to send any bribes to, or any of your other personal details, like maybe your daily schedule. It's not like any misfortune would happen to befall you should you not vote.

this is just to say

2010-06-30T19:28:00.003+01:00

This is such a pointless post. I really have absolutely nothing of interest to say. It's just, I have to finish editing/writing the bibliography for this really dry essay and I felt like writing something OTHER THAN THAT but couldn't think of anything at all to say.

I normally suffer from verbal diarrhoea... but this essay, it has a 1000 word limit. And I got really worried because that's pretty low. Normally I write essays double with that and I still struggle to keep my word count down. I thought I was a few hundred words over and so started making it a bit less wordy, when I realised I am actually under the word limit. This is an incredibly unusual situation for me. I have no idea what I am meant to do in this sort of situation.

Except for talk, and talk, while really saying nothing at all.

----

This Is Just To Say

by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

flash

2010-06-28T14:35:00.006+01:00

So the company which sent me the free pair of shoes asked me to post up a photo for a competition of a fashionable outfit I designed around the shoes. I was of course happy to oblige with the photo; however, today was the hottest day of the year (apparently) and I simply could not be a**** to get changed. You know how it is when it's hot and sticky and you want as little stuff touching your skin as possible, and if you are afforded the luxury of removing whatever it is touching your skin, you are highly unlikely to want to reclothe yourself.

Never mind; as luck would have it, the clothes I was already wearing I found matched my outfit pretty well.

I painted on some red lippy but then remembered that I'm meant to be blogging anonymously. So try to visualise some red lipstick and these cute little earrings dangling from my earlobes somewhere behind the explosion of light:

I love my Maloles from the Sarenza collection. I have blisters on both my heels the size of coins from the sandals I posted and the soft squidgy leather is a balm to my sore feet.

This isn't a particularly special outfit, so I'd feel bad asking people to vote for me. But I decided to go for this one anyway, because it epitomises my life, my style and my shoes: cuteness, seasonal appropriateness, but above all, comfort.

shopping the shelves

2010-06-27T22:29:00.004+01:00

Today I returned a dress, and bought some books. I always feel there is something inherently superior about buying a book over buying a garment. Books don't make you feel fat, or frivolous, or unsatisfied with what you've got, because you don't have anything which matches the new book. When you buy a book, you feel intellectual, like you've made an investment in something (education? mind? future? general well-being?) and complete, for the time being.

I didn't buy the book I set out with the intention of buying, even though I am sure I will at some point. It looked a bit thin and so I was loathe to spend the money on a hardback, even though the cover is pretty cool. I am curious if anyone has read it yet?

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis (the yellow casing on the right is sort of translucent, creating a shadow of a devil's silhouette. Suitably creepy)

I acknowledge that I am a sucker for a nice cover. There were some great classic covers on display, but I was again put off by the price, this time because on the back cover I could see they were charging a higher number in pounds than in dollars. Instead, I stuck to homegrown goods with yet another book by Scarlett Thomas. The design may be getting a bit gimicky (see past examples here and here), but I love it nevertheless. I bought this book despite the fact that I didn't enjoy the last one I read quite so much - I am hoping that was because I read what was then her latest book first, and then her first book next (does that make any sense?), so her writing seems to have improved with time. I am hoping this upwards trend will continue with Our Tragic Universe.

In contrast, I am currently nearing the end of a Penguin Classic (Return of the Native), whose cover leaves much to be desired. I'll forgive that, because the story's so great. But it's ironic really, that the story which so far has proved the most durable, has the least durable cover of all.

I really didn't think I was treating the book badly enough to warrant that much damage.

Here's a tip for you if you're not fussed about pristine book covers/your books also end up as above: when you choose a book, have a look through all the copies on display and see if any of the covers are damaged. So far, Waterstones have given me a pound off every damaged book I have bought off them. And when I say damaged, I mean really just a tiny tear or bit of scruffiness.

Said scruffiness. Can you see it? Also, John Steinbeck was hot.

Anyway, there it is, my 'shopping haulage', with a minor difference not normally seen on 'style blogs'. I apologise if all this was incredibly boring to you, because I suppose looking at book covers doesn't provide quite the same inspirational experience that a complete outfit or garment or photograph can. Of course, the words inside matter a lot. I just happen to enjoy the shopping part too.

hot hot hot

2010-06-26T22:58:00.003+01:00

This heat is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I love it. No need to layer or remember an umbrella. Ice lollies and cold drinks in the park. Lying outside with the sun on your arms and legs.

This year I have come to terms with all the negatives. I'll soldier through the mosquito bites nicely adorning my limbs, even the red swollen infected one which radiates heat, and all the other inconveniences of comfort which summertime brings. Because I do love summer.

Summer doesn't love my style, though. It stinks up my clothes with sweat (so I'm too scared to wear the nice ones), makes denim and black burn on my skin, makes wool and cashmere itchily redundant. In other words, 75% of my wardrobe is useless.

I bought this awesome tee I've wanted since January (aha - winter!) last week in the sale but I still haven't worn it because it's just not summer. That's weird, because it is a t-shirt, but it's also delicate and black and macabre.

In the summer, I'm all prep: white DKNY jeans mini-skirts, short short-shorts, breathable cotton polo-necks in pink, white and blue. I thought that's just what I own which works with the weather, but now I'm wondering if maybe it was a subconscious stylistic choice. After all, theoretically this is a summer t-shirt. But for me, it's just not.

shoe shrines

2010-06-19T13:57:00.003+01:00

Whenever I buy or wear a new pair of shoes, I always seem to create a post for them. An entire post, describing the need, the hunt and the acquisition and garnished with a photo or two: it feels like I am making a tribute to a VIP. In a way, I am. Shoes for me are the hardest thing to get; I have big feet which are sensitive to pain and I walk, a lot. So every pair feels like a rare triumph, although in retrospect, I do actually buy a lot of shoes. But they are also the only item of clothing I will wear every single day and I wear them out fast.

So, as I wrote, sometimes my tributes are to shoes re-discovered: example 1, example 2, example 3... or, this winter, all the boots I bought: example 1, example 2, example 3... or just random shoes: example 1, example 2, example 3. See what I mean? Finding these examples took me all of five minutes using the search function on the side of this blog, which has miraculously recently decided to start working again, much to my delight! Anyway, as you can see, I love paying tribute to my shoes.

Then you can imagine my excitement the other week when my lovely mother bought me the most fabulous pair of sandals to finally put an end to my never-ending quest. Or maybe she was just fed up of the smell of my over-heated feet. But when I got home, I found out I had another pair of shoes on my way. The lovely people at Sarenza had offered me a free pair of shoes, and with my affordable footwear difficulties over the years, there was no way I was going to refuse.

So I held out until I could post my two new beauties in tandem. And here they are. And that is all I have to say this time.

African Berry by Clarks (a portion of profits go to charity Soul of Africa)

Zoe pumps by Maloles

moths*

2010-06-16T13:27:00.000+01:00

Look what I found the other day. I was trying to sleep the night before my last exam and was really struggling. But I didn't feel more than usually anxious. Rather, I was hearing this whispering sound which made me feel like I was going mad. Maybe I was anxious? Maybe my stress had metamorphosised into schizophrenia?

Eventually at one in the morning I got out of my bed and began walking in the direction of the 'voices'. I pulled my bedroom blind up and out it flew - a mouth buzzing so quick it was barely visible. I had found it half a day earlier but opened my window and thought it flew out. Then I found another one later that day which vanished when I left the room to find something to catch it with. This photo is of the first moth sighting:

I began wondering after I managed to kill the one AM moth (no, I don't eat meat; yes, I do kill bugs if they were all the same both or not. Google taught me exactly the genre of moth and its chosen prey (thankfully I have completely forgotten all the details) and I began imagining hoard of moths eating at my cotton, cashmere, wool and silk (as I said, I think that's what they eat; I seem to have blanked the specific info out from my memory as some sort of coping mechanism). What if I have an infestation?

When I first looked at this photo I took, I felt only disgust and fear. Luckily, I haven't since sighted another of these animals. Now, a week later, the fear of total invasion slightly abated, I canadmire the precise outline of its 2D shape, the painterly quality of the complementary tones and the symmetry. I got a passport photo taken the other day and I realised for the first time in my life how remarkably unsymmetrical my nose is.

And so the moth became beautiful.

*Yes, I know, my blog post titles are getting totally shit. It's between being really unimaginative or cringeworthy right now - the alternative title I wanted to use originally was 'the fear'

c-c-ch....

2010-06-12T10:42:00.005+01:00

No, you didn't click on the wrong link; this is A Pretty Face. Actually, I changed the blog name too for all of three hours when I decided that the name didn't work. I can't even remember what I was thinking when I named this blog (I did try to explain it once but that isn't intelligible even to me). But then I realised that life doesn't work like that. You can't go back and pretend the mistakes you've made and you especially can't alter them now if you don't know what to change them too.

If I come up with an idea, maybe I'll change the blog's name to XXX, formerly A Pretty Face. But that's a bit of a mouthful.

For now, this is the blog re-design I mentioned, what, a month ago? Just before life decided to get in the way. The new design is actually a million miles far removed from what it was going to be, and I have a feeling it will undergo a few more tweaks, possibly drastic tweaks.

Can a tweak, by the very nature of the definition, be drastic? I think it demonstrates best what I am doing, though; I am not altering the content or substance of this blog. I'm just re-doing the make up, re-painting the face. Re-prettifying it.

Note: let me know if the colours hurt your eyes, or the font is too big/small for you to read etc etc. We never want to let style get in the way of functionality, do we?

Edit: Sabine at Psynopsis perspicaciously noticed that I'd changed my posting name too - which I clean forgot to mention here. I was starting to feel a bit too big-headed signing myself as 'pretty face'

technicolour

2010-06-11T13:17:00.004+01:00

You guys, I have SO much to write about. It's as if I have been keeping a firmly locked box of colours and just now sprung open the lock, and all the colours have poured out making everything interesting and exciting and beautiful, transforming everything which was before black and white into technicolour.

I currently have three posts in draft (not including this one). Whenever I open up a post to start writing, I write one sentence and then get distracted and move off. By the time I sit back down at the computer there is more to write. This blog has always been about documenting beauty, wherever I see it, which is maybe why there has been less of it lately. Now there is much, much more.

I haven't, to my recollection, posted 'food porn' before. I love eating, I do too much of it, but I am not a foodie. I eat the same things over and over again and my friends and I are all way too tight to ever go to posh restaurants.

But look at the food I was greeted with last night in celebration!

Just look!

How could I not show you that?

Note: The sushi and the duck and the dessert were really good - but as I said, I am not adventurous (read: heart-stoppingly boring) and when I'm sitting down to a meal I just don't feel like banana in my spring rolls and watermelon with my meat. So mainly for me it was just visual stimulation.

luck

2010-06-09T19:30:00.005+01:00

I have just finished a string of incredibly stressful and important exams - I haven't actually mentioned it on my blog; considering how much it bores me, I didn't think it would be the most fascinating piece of information I might have to share.

I came home yesterday feeling better than I have after any other exam. I think it was a combination of it 1) Being my weakest subject, so less pressure and expectation 2) Going so much better than I expected 3) Being my last exam - I really was past caring!

So I was feeling pretty lucky when I went home and received a parcel. It it was a keyring from Ollie & Nic. I was very confused, as I had not ordered anything from there, until I saw the little card that was also in there: an adorable pink A5 card with pink bows all over it. Apparently I came runner-up in a competition, so the keyring was a consolation prize. This year I started entering a lot of these competitions so I can't even remember what the first prize was, so I didn't feel the need to be consoled at all and was completely charmed instead.

I don't count myself as superstitious with all the regular fears of ladders, black cats and mirrors, but for my last two exams I took off the lucky necklace I normally wear because it felt negative. I'm not sure I can describe it - it felt like any positivity it gave me had been worn off by all the difficulties it has had to see me through over the past year and a half - but wearing it made me feel unlucky. But it's all good; I think I've found my new lucky charm.

very very old

2010-06-06T13:17:00.002+01:00

In my ever-continuing quest for shoes to wear, I decided to have a clear-out to determine exactly what I do and do not have.

I ended up throwing away one pair of cheap red plastic ballet flats which were never actually comfortable.

I know, I'm a good clear-outer.

There was one pair of shoes I really struggled over. My grandma bought them for me when I was 11 years old; yes, they are that old. Any sign of where they came from has been erased by wear from the shoe and by time from my memory. I can remember trying them on in a shoe shop in central London, and agonising whether to buy these or another red velvet pair. I can remember they were expensive. But that's it - no concrete details.

Anyway, I stopped wearing them a few years ago when they started pinching my toes a bit too unbearably. The funny thing is, they are white, which you would imagine to be the least durable colour possible, and indeed they are pretty scruffy. They are not, unsurprisingly, particularly fashionable. But I still can't stand to throw them out.

So the other day I need to put some shoes on really quickly, as I was running late. Post clear-out, my old shoes were resting somewhere near the top of the sea of shoes that is my footwear chest. I put them on for the first time in years and actually ended up running in them in an effort to get to my destination on time. It was pretty painful.

But I didn't get any blisters and now somehow the shoes feel a lot bigger. They must have stretched. I am pretty delighted and I'm going to wear and wear and wear them now until they fall apart. Then I'll have to investigate methods of preservation and mummification of very very old shoes.

twins

2010-05-29T13:16:00.006+01:00

I finally made my first successful eBay purchase for myself this week. It was also the first time I successfully used bid sniper (thanks go to WendyB for the recommendation!) which means sadly my free trial is over (unless they give me more snipes for that link...)

In the meantime, I slipped into my new dress as soon as it arrived and started prancing around in my bedroom, feeling all summery and bright despite the deluge I can hear outside.

I say 'new dress', but then I started thinking about that's quite a misleading statement in a number of ways

1) It's from eBay. I know it's at least two years old, because I remember when it was in the shops. However it was sold 'as new', smells totally new, no weird stains or anything of that sort. I feel like the stitching could be tighter, but if it unravels it should be pretty easy to fix.

2) Is it really a dress? It covers my bum when I'm standing up. And the top of my thighs. I see it as a dress, but the eBay seller sold it as a 'top/tunic' and most other people might agree... also, I've been wearing it as a dress for the last two years and haven't received too many outraged glares.

Which leads me to number 3):

I sort of already have it. The same style, the same brand, the same fabric, the same size: the same dress. Only difference is the colourway. I normally try to refrain from buying duplicates; I see it as lazy and that there are so many great options out there, why buy the same thing twice? I'll do it with workout clothes and underwear, but that's it normally. Maybe with a basic t-shirt. But a statement dress??

Except I don't like to call my new dress a copy; I prefer to think of it as a twin. The same design and DNA maybe, but different colours and patterns and motifs branded on the hem and back. The comfort of the known: when I bid, I knew it would flatter and fit me and I know what clothes it will work with. But at the same time, the excitement of the unknown: different palette, different vibe.

Twin I---------------------------Twin II

So really, I still think of it as a new dress.

hey baby you're back

2010-05-25T20:50:00.004+01:00

I hadn't picked up my DSLR for so long.

I don't tend to take it to parties, for fear of damaging it, and I didn't take it on holiday with me this year, so I've mainly been using my smaller digital camera for any moments that have needed documenting.

The one thing which really inspires me to want to take photos is the sight of beautiful plants in summer. It has been hitting 30 degrees this week and summer really seems to have arrived (for now; rain is returning later in the week) and when walking or running I have always wished I had my camera with me. The great thing about plants is that they're colourful, gorgeous and alive, yet most importantly they don't move. I struggle with the free will of humans and animals, and the frozen-ness of objects, but flowers I love. This is probably more to do with lack of skill than personal preference, but I was wondering, those of you who are interested in photography, do you too find strengths in one particular area?

I should have known that I'd get distracted when I decided to work in the garden today. When it started getting windy I packed up all my pieces of paper and abandoned any pretence of working in favour of brushing the dust off my camera and taking some photos.

Internet ban?

2010-05-20T23:40:00.004+01:00

Have you ever self-imposed one of these?

Obvs I would need to keep certain sites like dictionary.reverso.net and other sleep-inducing things of boredom. But I'm thinking this weekend I really, really need an internet ban.

Why? Well, let me count (just some of) the ways.

Hours spent trawling eBay for things I need/want/am interested in/am amused by.
Hours spent on Facebook generally being a stalker but also, more importantly, running an awesome(ly loser-ish) café on Café World.
The sheer quantity of old episodes of Criminal Minds I have ploughed my way through - oh, and the fact that I am now shit-scared whenever I am alone ANYWHERE that a serial killer is about to take me hostage.
Pages and pages of articles and blogs etc which I cannot stop reading until past midnight.

And now let me count (just some of) the reasons why it isn't going to happen.

I have like 50 watched items on eBay this weekend.
I have so many meals cooking in my virtual café. They would be spoiled!
I would get lonely eating lunch alone without Reid and Hotcher and the rest of team.
I love you guys too much. Your writing makes me think, laugh, unwind.

But, seriously, I do have Very Important Exams Very Soon. It's quite funny, but it's a universal thing among all my friends. We are all too stressed and busy to meet up, but if I tallied up all the hours I have wasted as noted above, they would easily equal a crazy all night party AND a day's recovery. But seeing as we are not wired to function so logically, I should at least be spending my spare time exercising or something, and reading vaguely related material to the exams (in fairness, I did read Grazia today. Does that count?).

But then, that wouldn't be logical.

Made up

2010-05-16T17:22:00.002+01:00

Today I was in Selfridges and about to walk out when a lady approached me from a make-up counter and offered to do my face. I looked like shit today and so I was not surprised. I accepted the offer, and it was only afterwards that I realised I was in the Topshop section and the make-up was Topshop. I asked the lady since when Topshop has been doing make-up and she said it was only launched this month, so I guess that's why I had never noticed it before.

She was piling it on, or at least that's how it felt to me. I am terrible with make-up; can't apply it, can't be bothered to learn. And it's not even like I have the excuse of naturally glowing skin - my 'excuse' is that starting to apply foundation might actually make my spots worse.

But when I looked in the mirror, it really didn't look like I was wearing very much at all. I just looked like I actually got some sleep last night, and like I actually have eyelashes, which I think are both very positive things.

They don't actually sell foundation, which is probably a good thing as none of my past forays into foundation have exactly been successful. I have to admit I sort of lost focus when she explained everything she applied, but looking on the Topshop website, I have a feeling it was every single skin product they have available: Skin Glow, Skin Tint (both in Light), Brighten in Moonlight (concealer) AND Blush (in Flush). Hmm.

Everything's so cheap, which means that for a total make-up failure like me, you don't feel so bad buying it for the sake of experimentation.

I ended up actually buying one of them, the skin tint, because it's really a moisturiser and I can deal with moisturiser. Still, I have no idea how I will apply it. I might engage in some male-up experiments with my new skin tint and some decaying blusher and congealed concealer I'm sure I have knocking about somewhere in my ever-so dusty make-up box.

I am determined to make this work, because who doesn't love looking like they had a full night's sleep?

therapeutic retail

2010-05-11T20:24:00.003+01:00

I am still super-stressed. I don't mind working hard, but I'm getting so drained that any down-time gets spent slumped staring mindlessly at some sort of screen, instead of anything more productive or fun. Exercise? I think I'm forgetting the meaning of the word.

I can't wait for this week to be over, because I go on study leave and then I will be allowed to time-keep on my own terms, which in my world means that being awake should never be experienced before 10 AM, under any circumstances.

Today I decided to break from the spirit-numbing routine and delay the start of my Desperate Housewives zombie-state marathon by half an hour. I stopped off on the way home and I checked out a couple of shoe shops, because I need new shoes.

However, I have come to realise that functionality is a huge limiting factor on the power of retail therapy. Also problematic are guilty expensive purchases, painful things (e.g. gorgeous new heels), or beautiful stuff which makes you feel ugly and fat.

Which made this £5 silly little necklace the perfect choice. I didn't need it at all.

diary

2010-05-06T21:55:00.003+01:00

Oh my god, I have SO much to write about. But two nights ago I got four hours of broken sleep due to some idiotic time-keeping (no, really. I was operating four hours ahead of real time for over an hour before realising that the reason it's dark is because it's THREE THIRTY AT NIGHT).

I think I am still recovering. Over the past two days I have been thinking and doing some very strange things... among them I can include eating chocolate, which I haven't done in over three years; switching political allegiances, at the polling station (don't worry though; never Tory); altering my opinion on who I like and who I don't (I know technically it should be 'whom' but that just sounds pretentious).

But, anyway, yesterday I moved my bedtime forward to 9PM and today it's 10 so I'm obviously not very good at this timekeeping stuff. I had better be off, which makes this post something I haven't done in a while! Since September according to my archives. An 'off to bed post'.

For those of you who haven't read them before, click here to read the cringeingly bad series of posts written, as you can probably guess from their name, just before I went to sleep. I refuse to delete them, even though I know for my own pride's sake, I should.

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne

2010-05-03T18:18:00.004+01:00

A few days ago, I sat down at my desk in my pyjamas for a day of work. It felt wrong and I couldn't motivate myself so I decided to get dressed (up). I put on a silk dress which I received in February but which I haven't had the opportunity to wear yet. Sitting at my desk in a luxurious dress I felt kind of silly, but also nice and important.

I carried on wearing the dress through my evening plans, but I think even if I didn't have evening plans, it's an interesting idea to dress in beautiful things even if the only person enjoying the sight of them is yourself. Especially if the only person enjoying the sight of them is yourself (because you don't need to fear being over-dressed, under-dressed or otherwise inappropriately dressed). The beautiful printed animals were sort of distracting, though.

------------------------------------------------------------
For ages now (maybe a year) I have noticed a ring my mum has. It is always somewhere else; sometimes on the stairs, sometimes on the windowsill in the lounge. Today I noticed it's been getting a bit damaged, so this is what I said to her:

'I thought it might be a good idea for me to wear it, seeing as it's going to get lost or damaged lying about the house, at least until you decide what you want to do with it'

I have no idea where she got it from but I love wearing it and feeling even more regal and ridiculous.

Excuse the ink stained finger, I swear the ink from my pen must have permanently stained my skin as I can't get rid of it!

my proudest moment

2010-04-29T16:41:00.004+01:00

I didn't end up wearing those pretty shoes was planning to. I woke up and it was an hour and a half after I was meant to wake up, so I was meant to have left home twenty minutes before I WOKE UP.

I had to run. No time for uncomfortable cork wedge experimentation. So sorry, no report on that just yet. Luckily the weather seems to have cooled down a bit so I can go back to my beloved winter boots.

I did, however, have time to photograph my one-step outfit. I have started chronicling them, you see, because that only takes a minute.

Now these photos are exceptionally rubbish. They are taken in the reflection of my dusty mirror in my often poorly lit bedroom with a little point-and-click by yours truly. Which is why I haven't taken up the habit of posting my daily photos on this blog; this is meant to be a collection of pretty things, and my outfit photos are really anything but.

I'd prefer to take nice photos to share with you all. But I am so so so tired (hence why I managed to sleep through my alarm). And I really don't think you want the alternative, but in case you do, this is what it would be like:

^^Me, trying to snap the pretty bow on the back of the top I wore today. No, I didn't upload the second photo by accident.

spring/summer footwear

2010-04-26T23:03:00.002+01:00

I really am struggling with footwear this summer. The weather has suddenly taken a turn for the better, so my new boots are definitely relegated for the time being.

In the meantime, I am wearing these super-comfy cuties. Day in, day out.

But I am quickly growing tired of them. I am also running out of cut-away socks to wear them with. Also, they fact that they are completely does nothing for my legs. I miss the subtle heel on my winter boots.

My other options from last summer are weirdly all no longer suitable. The converse I used to rely on now give me tremendous blisters, ever since I wore them for a half hour walk without socks (even though now I wear them with thick sport socks... it's really odd!). I am not feeling the Birkenstocks at all. I obviously, being a girl, have a multitude of colourful pumps but they all hurt like hell and are mainly too small. I just keep them 'cos they're pretty. The last two summers I had the most awesome pair of white leather moccasins EVER, but I literally wore them to death and the whole things unravelled.

Basically I am left with these as an option (which isn't happening).

Digging around in my shoe chest, I came across these:

When I first bought them about 3 years ago for something like a tenner from Topshop, everyone made fun of my granny shoes. And indeed, walking in them would be better described as hobbling. But I love them, and they don't hurt my feet when I'm stationary, which is already one up from all the pumps in my shoe chest. So I'm going to try to wear them tomorrow, armed with boxes of plasters and my comfortable Clarks in a spare bag. I feel like such an old lady already!

could it be i like you?

2010-04-25T21:22:00.002+01:00

I am so so so desperate for a pair of these

I'm not fussed on the particulars. I'd settle for any of these beauties.

Open-mouthed...

2010-04-23T20:45:00.002+01:00

The other day I noticed my friend giving me a funny open-mouthed look. I realised they were imitating me, so I tried to close my mouth and look more demure. I started to suffocate.

That's how blocked my nose is.

I thought it was the bane of my life, i.e. hayfever, re-rearing its ugly head at the first sign of summer. Now with the tummy ache, sore throat and general tiredness I think I might just have a common cold (which is weirdly a relief).

So I haven't been up to much except lying on the glass absentmindedly, sitting in front of the computer reading or watching absentmindedly, and, best of all, playing Brick Breaker concentratedly.

The new blog banner (and maybe other slight adjustments maybe? Nothing drastic) reveal will have to wait. In the meantime, are there any things about the font/sizes/colours on the blog which you don't like/make it harder for you to read?

rucksack/backpack/comfortable ugly bag you wear on your back

2010-04-20T19:23:00.004+01:00

That's what I'm looking for (read this post's title)↑

I currently sport the ugliest bag you could ever imagine: bright purple canvas Eastpack, stained, grubby and totally falling apart. But that's all fine. Just the fact that, to add insult to the industry, it hurts so much to carry it - that's what bothers me.

(this is the bag:)

Across the body bags may seem so convenient, but they are not. They hurt. I don't want to ruin any of my nice leather shoulder bags and so I thought about buying a new one but decided I didn't think I could bring myself to ruin that if I bought it either. So I'm thinking, let's go old school and buy a backpack. Except, I really don't want a plain ugly one like I normally get.

I was in Urban Outfitters the other day, and I spotted these cute ones in the men's section.

Except I couldn't decide on the colour, then I debated its practically (you can't tell from the photo, but it's huge and essentially like two oversized pockets, which I imagine would make for a nightmare when searching for stuff). So I didn't get either (yet). £28, so fairly standard for a backpack.

Now the next option is seriously cool. I just found it on the Urban Outfitters website but I already have a bag by this designer which I wear all the time, despite it being tiny. It's just so intuitively made, I can cram so much into it and it still looks great.

The downside? It costs 65 English Pounds. Which is too much for a bag which will, essentially, be destroyed.

This PVC Eastpak is also £65 but I know it will be ridiculously durable. And I can get a discount on my student card with Eastpak. However it is a touch nu-rave for me.

Hmm, decisions decisions.

Also, on a completely different topic, I'm going to be changing the blog header in a couple of days, and I have this awesome website I discovered I used to make the header which I want to share with you, and I can't wait to share it!

totally seasonally inappropriate but hey..

2010-04-18T20:23:00.003+01:00

Today I decided that seeing as it's my last day of holiday I am not even going to try to work. Yes, I could do with the extra work but I am not too far behind and it's a gorgeous day and I was feeling a bit 'blah' (yes, great description of my feelings there, I know). All holiday I have been so lazy and barely ventured out of a 3 mile circumference around my home. I had so many plans; couldn't be bothered with any of them. So today I headed off to my favourite shopping destination for a relaxing spot of window shopping: Covent Garden.

It's true what they say, isn't it, about only finding something when you're not looking for it. Although that's not the most useful piece of advice, as it's very difficult to let go of the tension when you really want/need something, it's a good thing to keep in mind in the opposite situation. By the opposite situation, I mean when you find a gorgeous pair of tall boots on the hottest day of the year so far. But they are such a classic style, very well made and HALF price despite (as a quick Google proved) still costing full price everywhere you can find them online.

So I bought them. Which is sad as I doubt I will be able to wear them very much for a good few months, however, come September I know I won't regret it. I would have had to have bought a new pair of boots then anyway as this year's cheap-ish M&S boots have proven not so durable - although I have worn them almost every day, several holes have appeared in the sole. In the meantime, I can just gaze at my new boots fondly.

(a picture I found online, except mine are brown)

I know plenty of people who like to buy their Christmas supplies just after Christmas when it's all on clearance, and sandals in the end-of-summer sales. It seems like a good money-saving tactic. Who else has bought something completely seasonally (or in some other way) inappropriate, knowing that it will be useful later?

a medium child

2010-04-17T19:22:00.003+01:00

It's funny how I've been posting more frequently recently. I think it's a combination of having creative writing block, and revising block, which leaves me with nothing to do but think, think, and unable to write what I need to. So it's nice to have this outlet.

That could probably explain the weird range of topics lately, so I thought I'd re-focus things by showing you this amazing find I found last week. I wrote about it briefly in my mad post last Saturday, although buried amongst a million other things I'll forgive you if you missed it.

And I wore a denim jacket I'd forgotten I had and which I expected not to fit me at all (I can't do the buttons up but it looks great!) as it is officially a children's jacket.

I was so pleased to discover it. It was a present which I don't even remember getting, so I must have only been about ten. It’s Diesel, so I bet it was expensive. And it was buried away in a drawer of clothes for my little sister for so long that we’d forgotten it existed, until I decided that I needed a denim jacket to go with this dress I wanted to wear. As I said, I can’t exactly do the buttons up (well, I can, but it looks completely ridiculous). And the sleeves are a teensy bit short, but not noticeably so. As my friend put it, it looks ‘shrunken on purpose’, as these days in fashion nothing’s meant to look quite right. It’s all about the accidental-on-purpose ripped, over-sized, skin-tight, cropped, painted, faded, hybrid. Which means I get to wear a child’s ‘Medium’ jacket.

If we want to get all analytical about this, as I seem to be doing with everything recently, I love how this jacket really affirms the transition into spring. But also, it seems to suit my mood right now. More than ever, I feel really, really young and not ready for all this grown-up stuff which is what life is made of. So I like wearing this jacket, because it makes me think that I can just be carefree and young and stop analysing everything. But I made this post not to get into all that, so look, look at my new old jacket, isn't it pretty?

internet sales

2010-04-16T10:38:00.003+01:00

Today TheOutnet had a birthday sale where everything only cost a pound. Pretty dedicated, I set my alarm to 9AM to try and get something.

The sale started at 7.23AM and almost everything was sold out. As I proceeded to try to sign it, that took an hour and then by the time I managed even more had sold out. I managed to get a nice top into my basket before that, too, promptly sold out.

Apparently now the sale is closed, 9 hours early.

I am getting so fed up of this internet shopping lark. At least in person you can get pushed and shoved but you won't be left clicking furiously away and being greeted with nothing but a white screen and a couple of black lines of error code. It feels like the equivalent of one of those dreams where you're kicking up this huge fuss and tantrum but it's as if you're both invisible and silent.

The same happened with eBay; I couldn't just buy an item which I liked. I was competing with other people. Then I tried to get a Glastonbury ticket, but after being in a 'queue' for an hour I gave up. In real life it would be so easy to shove my way to the front.

I should just go back to real-life shopping, shouldn't I? If only I hadn't suddenly become so lazy, or busy, or both. I haven't bought anything from a shop since my denim waistcoat. Wasn't that in January? So I'm starting to think my shopping hobby is a lost cause.

How do you shop? How do you overcome your frustrations with the failures of the refresh button?

i feel sick

2010-04-15T16:17:00.003+01:00

I just ate a whole almond cookie. It was round and beautiful like an over-sized macaroon. Then I took a bite and it was eggy and floury and not that delicious. So I put it aside. On one side of my desk was my plate with the once-bitten almond cookie and on the other was my revision textbook. I realised that if I was eating the cookie I wouldn't be able to revise, not without making crumbs anyway.

So I ate the whole cookie.

Gazing at the plate of forlorn crumbs, I started to feel sick. I just ate this huge fat cookie which didn't taste delicious. Surely that cancels out this morning's run? And more?

I began to feel guilty and distracted by thoughts of how I should have thrown it away as soon as I realised it wasn't that nice. Or just removed it from my desk. And what I should do now - skip dinner maybe? Although it wasn't really that bad, I rationalised, seeing as I hardly ever eat cakes or stuff. Then I remembered doing almost the exact same thing with a disgusting tasteless banana muffin which I nearly finished anyway.

But I can't do anything about the consumed cookie. I just need to wait for the sick feeling in my stomach to subside (it's actually there; due to too much sugar NOT a manifestation of my psychological state, I promise). And move on.

yah

2010-04-14T21:26:00.003+01:00

I'm interested to know if people who haven't in the past or don't currently live in England find this as endlessly hilarious as every single person I know does?

failure

2010-04-11T17:07:00.003+01:00

For the past few hours I have been desperately trying to figure out the best method of revising TS Eliot's poems. The internet isn't much help because most of the stuff it throws up is incoherent rubbish, or fragmented (you have to pay for the rest). I spent a while procrastinating on the examination board's website, which proved near to useless in terms of examples to follow with the single sentence 'very few responses were seen on this' for the Eliot questions. So I resorted to a study guide (specifically The Cambridge Introduction to T.S. Eliot) despite my teacher's protestations that you need to discover your own interpretations, that study guides stifle creative responses...

I came pretty close to giving up on the study guide as it continued to confuse and give me a head-ache more than explain anything, when I got stuck on lines such as 'poetry is made by the ironic foregrounding of all these hollow materials'. What does that even mean? What are 'these' hollow materials? This sentence I quote is the first sentence in the first paragraph of a section! How am I meant to know what 'these' are?

There seemed to be some useful analysis of the structure coming up though, so I read on. Five lines from a poem were quoted and then the writer went on to say that 'the rhythmic effect of the fourth line is self-consciously engulfed by the wider irony... we hear the effect itself as a sign of a debased verbal coinage'. Right. The thing is, I didn't hear any rhythmic effect and I have no idea what a debased verbal coinage is. Yet still, I ploughed on. However I just had to throw the study guide down in exasperation when I came across this line:

'We return to the epigraph like a drowning man.'

I have never thought myself entitled to comment on the writers of educational textbooks because, well, they're clever people, with lots of letters after their names and plenty of experience. But you can't deny that they often fail miserably in doing the job of explaining and making stuff clear. It feels like some of these writers, this one in particular, has some seriously stored up resentment over the fact that they themselves never made it as a poet (in this case). I mean, who uses similes in a study guide? Similes? Isn't that a poetic technique?

---

I doubt that a single person would find the above four paragraphs of any interest so if you have read until here to get to the actual point of my post, thank-you and congratulations for making it through my rant. The reason I wrote all that is that it is an illustration of what I seem to be experiencing right now: a failure of expectations. I just wrote four paragraphs about the failure of a study guide to meet my expectations of a study guide. That in itself probably makes me a failure of your expectations as a 'style blogger' (oh, how completely have I deviated from that categorisation).

Yesterday I had to go to a party which I expected would be tortuously boring and awkward. But I was looking forward to dressing up, so it was all good. I wore a lace frilly dress, which I expected I would never have a chance to wear. I paired it with a belt which is in itself a whole funny story of life taking you completely by surprise - I should remember to do a separate post on that. And I wore a denim jacket I'd forgotten I had and which I expected not to fit me at all (I can't do the buttons up but it looks great!) as it is officially a children's jacket.

I'd hoped the lucky belt would help me make it through the party; it turned out not to. In fact, the whole event turned out to be tortuously not boring. Embarrassingly I broke down and had to pretend I'd hit my head. Of course this led to the assumption that I was simply drunk. I wish I had been!

But wait, maybe failures of expectations can be good. Wouldn't I have preferred if the party had turned out amazing? And maybe the study guide debacle has proved to me that I should trust my teacher's advice to avoid study guides when studying Eliot? If this mammoth post is to come to some sort of conclusion, I think it would be that we should allow life to take us by surprise. Then we'd avoid boredom, shock and disappointment at failed expectations.

buy it now

2010-04-08T14:45:00.004+01:00

Only two posts ago, I was lavishing praise on the wonder of eBay. That was before I realised that I fail, miserably, at winning anything on that site. All that catches my eye is so desirable that it goes for extortionate prices, or so hideous that I realise I have no idea what possessed me when I clicked 'watch' and thence receive countless notifications that 'the item you have been watching has been relisted'. Hmm, yes, no surprises there.

The other day, though, I finally succeeded when my friend practically forced my hand to click 'Buy it now' on her birthday present. I myself don't smoke and never have, so I certainly don't wish to condone it. But when we saw how awesome they made Julianne Moore and Colin Firth look in A Single Man last month I wondered if even I might succumb to the allure of cigarettes, as long as they were pink.

Don't worry; I haven't. I am not that impressionable. But I get why for someone who does smoke these are like the holy grail of amazingness. And if I can associate myself with someone who has then, then surely some of that amazingness has to rub off on me. So we bought some pink Polish cigarettes, which I highly doubt will ever arrive but if they do, I will have achieved at least one eBay purchase. And thus cigarettes will have provided me with the ultimate success. But only because they're pink.

*Please note that this post was totally tongue-in-cheek, mum.

awol

2010-04-05T17:41:00.002+01:00

Sorry, I am totally AWOL right now. I can't seem to find any creative inspiration whatsoever, in writing, in dressing, in anything. And I've lost my i-Pod so I don't even have my music and I'm in that revision place right now where reading has become completely devoid of any remnant of fun.

Just letting you know, 'cos I wouldn't want you to think I was dead or anything!

Blahhh.

as per usual

2010-03-28T21:18:00.003+01:00

As per usual, I am several years behind with my latest obsession: eBay. I only got my account about a week ago after WendyB suggested I look for a top on there. Oh my god it is so very addictive. Soon after I began aimlessly searching through the swathes of stuff, I came upon a lovely bag and remembered how much I've been wanting a black leather bag for ages. Yes, eBay has plenty of those.

I haven't watched a single TV programme today, but eBay has filled in more than enough of my revision breaks, and somehow managed to spill into revision time, and last-minute revision time...

I have had quite a rollercoaster experience today. First, the bag I loved and which had stayed at the starting price for several days rocketed fifty pounds higher. Then I found another bag I quite liked and bid and was the highest bidder and there were only five minutes left. Then I started panicking because I decided I hated it and had been blinded by the designer name and the relatively low price and the fact that it was a black bag. All the while one friend was very soothing: 'it's really nice!' while the other just laughed. I never imagined I would be relieved to be sniped.

Now I have find a bag nicer than the two together but there's two days left and I don't know how I'll deal with the suspense. Currently I'm the highest bidder and there's no panic whatsoever. I feel great.

(and I have completely been completely side-tracked from my blouse search, and any chance of a decent mark in my test tomorrow).

McQueen-like keen

2010-03-25T21:36:00.002Z

A thought crossed my mind today as I noticed an exchange between two girls I know on my Facebook news feed.

They were showing each other links to Alexander McQueen pieces on NAP. One of the items was a £90 pair of leggings. Now, that's probably the very cheapest full-priced item of McQueen available out there, so one of them began to seriously consider buying them. Comparatively cheap, yes. Cool, yes. But still, £90 for a pair of jersey leggings with holes in them.

And I started browsing and wondering if maybe I should get a nice skull bracelet or ring. None of them are over £200. Expensive, but perfectly affordable. Now I won't be disingenuous; I do genuinely love McQueen designs and I always have lusted over its macabre glamour. However, I am still left wondering how much this McQueen buying frenzy is because people want what they're buying, or if it's to do with McQueen's death?

I understand the feeling that this is our last chance, that these pieces are even investments. But these are not pieces of couture from the last collection I am talking about. These are simple factory made basics which could easily be churned out for years longer.

All this reminds me of the importance of a name behind any object. There is a skull bracelet I love, but when looked at from afar it just looks like another emo wristband and I cannot deny that part of the bracelet's allure is the beautifully stamped font on the bracelet's inside.

It's the same with an interlocking C Chanel bag, earrings, necklace, whatever. The interlocking C design in itself is not particularly pretty; in fact, it is kind of tacky. It would be futile to deny that we love it because of the connotations of the brand those Cs indicate: French-ness; chic-ness; wealth; the LBD; haute couture; extravagance.

But that's all a bit of a tangent. What I originally started wondering about was the nature of our current bewitchment. Again, let me state that I genuinely do love and wish I could own this or this. But what about the £150 plain basic t-shirts with a printed skull on the front (no detail; no craftsmanship; just a printed skull). In my opinion, the desire for these is more about the ability to possess something which could become rare, whether we want the item in question or not. Perhaps it is indicative of our material celebrity culture. Or a morbid fascination with death?

At the end of the day, I am not sure myself. I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

simple life

2010-03-24T12:22:00.002Z

There are a couple of fashion-y things I need to resolve: an owl pendant who is currently one-eyed and a boot with a hole in the sole. But currently desire seems to be taking over necessity and whenever I have time to shop (which is rarely), I find myself scouring the shops looking for just one thing: the perfect top.

I know exactly what I want. It has to be cream; slightly pinkish or yellowish but not grey-ish and definitely not off-white. It has to be slightly sheer but not completely, and not silky and not jersey like a t-shirt and not starched like a shirt. It has to have sleeves; not capped short sleeves or off the shoulder but just gently puffed three quarter or all the way sleeves. It has to either have a waist emphasis or skim loosely over my body; none of that drawstring at the hips which makes me look heavily pregnant, please. And some nice embroidery or detailing of some sort would be nice, but nothing which makes it impossible to wash. Also, let it be cheap.

Not so difficult, right?

I thought I found the perfect one, but with its fitted waist a size 16 just didn't work.
Maybe if my fingers were less hopelessly undextrous with a sewing machine, I could let out the bottom of this:

A bit more sheer, dear:

Even in the summer I don't think it would be warm enough to go sleeveless. Speaking of which, how ridiculously disproportionate is the amount of sandals being sold/bought in the shops every year in the UK?

Nearly there, if I had a pair of high-waisted jeans to prevent crop-top territory:

Who knew such a simple desire could be so complicated?

read, read and read some more

2010-03-18T21:51:00.003Z

It might be time for me to stop watching TV and reading blogs.

However much I love, love, love these activities, there is the inevitable fact that it means I read less books. And I have realised that if I am to successfully study English I have to read a lot more.

So I have devised a new system in which for the first time ever I plan to finally manage to read two novels at the same time.

In morning and afternoon I carry Lolita with me on public transport. That gets me through about 40 pages a day; sadly, I seem to have become a slow reader. Then in the evening I settle down in bed with an untransportable Middlemarch, which has definitely managed to entirely cure my insomnia.

Scattered on my desk are the books on which I am currently writing a life-devouring essay. There is also my abandoned copy of Visions of Gerard, just because I love it.

In my bag is the discounted early Charlotte Bronte short novel I bought for £2 off. Doesn't it look pretty?

Slight panic set in today after the excitement subsided when I took delivery of a free set of books of Shakespeare. Free, because they are part of an essay-writing course.

All these books definitely create the feeling that I am reading, reading and reading some more, even if Lolita is the only book I am actually reading at all. Oops.

healing

2010-03-14T18:07:00.002Z

I really need to improve my time-management skills.

I spent ages messing around with the self-timer on my digital camera, realising the utility of balancing the camera on a stack of books (finally, a use for all those weighty volumes I buy...), trying to successfully snap my new heels.

They're not exactly new. They are a few years old, only I recently managed to persuade my mum to give them to me seeing as she has only worn them once since she bought them.

You see, I don't wear heels. I am tall-ish so they would be pretty conspicuous on a day-to-day basis. I am not so down with dressing up. Comfort is the main thing I take into consideration with footwear. I walk a lot. And my feet are bigger than those of most of my friends so I don't partake in the whole sharing shoes thing. All elements not very conducive to heel ownership.

But I do love heels, and on Friday I felt a bit frumpy so I decided to put on these heeled boots. Wow! Immediate difference to my entire mood, posture, aura. I love that I don't feel very dressed up either due to their boot-ness.

Still, the click-clack when I walk makes me feel a little grown-up, so I'm thinking a softer heel is next on my list. Maybe a nice crepe-y wedge? Suggestions, lovely readers?

memory triggers

2010-03-11T17:21:00.008Z

Twenty-four months ago, I took this photo

When I look at it, it reminds me of the beginning of my love of France.

It reminds me of that awful phase when I was obsessed with fashion and beauty and I wore the most beautiful clothes (because I could afford it then) but I paired them with the short thick slugs of eyebrows, braces on my teeth and an unfortunate haircut.

It reminds me of the deepest, sincerest love I felt for the beautiful French trainee teacher. That one took me a good six months to get over.

I took this photo exactly a year ago. A card I made for my sister on her birthday. A token of my love. (I need to make one tonight pretty soon, actually). When I look at photos of her this time last year, I feel sad about how thin she looks but happy because she was ill and now she's better. When I look at this photo, I don't think about her at all but about the boy I started talking to again last spring and I realise how epically sad it is that a year later my sister has overcome her horrible illness and I'm still wallowing over something silly.

I'm not that shallow though. This photo, taken at little sis's party reminds me of my best friend. Who was there. Who I haven't spoken to for a couple of months and who I haven't really spoken to for over half a year.

I took this today. This book would have been bought by one of my grandparents. I've only read a couple of pages, but I still think it's beautiful, and I love it for the so many hundreds of feelings and memories it triggers.

The lamp said,
“Four o’clock,	70
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.	75
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”

The last twist of the knife.

Rhapsody on a Windy Night, T.S. Eliot

desire

2010-03-07T21:09:00.005Z

Wow, I hadn't realised that it's been so long since I last wrote on here. I don't know when I would have eventually realised if today I hadn't gone shopping for a gift for my little sister and fallen insanely in love with a million things of beauty which I felt I had to share on my beauty log. It's nice to come back to this blog once in a while after a blogging absence with a post which actually says something other than 'oh my, I am really a very bad blogger, um, sorry about that... what have I been doing? Watching TV mostly'. Which I can still say, because in truth the past week has been mainly occupied with my discovery that you can watch episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch online! Childhood revisited, yay!

ANYWAY.

I haven't yet got round to watching the new Alice in Wonderland movie I have excitedly blogged about several times. I am waiting for aforementioned sister's birthday. I have, however, had a chance to discover the Swarovski collaboration with Disney on this new film.

My favourite, favourite, favourite piece is the spilled tea pendant.

Nevertheless, I would happily settle for a Cheshire Cat, my favourite character in the stories. Or maybe a couple of trendy stacked rings to celebrate my love of solitaire.

On a more affordable level are the Disney Couture designs, none of which seems to have the same whimsical magical sparkly charm but which I would still definitely not say no to (hint, hint?)

spring allowance

2010-02-28T17:47:00.003Z

Yesterday I went job-browsing. Instead of a job, a 30% discount on denim at GAP caught my eye.

I haven’t spent money on myself in a while. Simply all the money I can afford to spend has gone on gifts for other people (which is why I was looking for a job). But my mind was also fixated on a denim waistcoat, having got over and moved on, for now, from my winter obsession with a fur gilet. Luckily for my bank balance, this cool concept almost always looks horrible in person, on person.

But the waistcoat I spied on a mannequin was perfect. And it felt so Spring-like, which seemed so apt considering it is March tomorrow and this would be the first non-woolen top I would have bought in what feels like years, but is actually months. It doesn't matter that I have already spent all the money I can afford for the rest of spring on what is essentially the least useful item of clothing possible, because it is an item of clothing which is perfect for spring.

2010-02-27T23:23:00.004Z

I found this video posted Phoebe, stylish and deservedly successful writer of the blog Lady Melbourne, really interesting.

Property of Lady Melbourne's blog!

As a long-term blogger, I nevertheless do not have a very wide audience. The reason I have always attributed is that I don't make enough of an effort to advertise, comment etc. This is of course true, and when I do make that effort my readership does creep up, but I have never even at the height of my effort become 'famous'. Watching this video was like an illumination for me. I do everything I could possibly do wrong: irregular posting schedule, lack of consistency in content, uncontrollable word count; I don't know what the hell I am doing.

Don't get me wrong, I am completely and utterly not complaining about my blog. I don't want a famous blog, because I want to maintain anonymity which is much easier when no-one you know knows this blog exists.

But there is something about the way I write here which is reflected in the way I live my life. Partly, that is worrying. Not being able to figure out your feelings, your direction, not being able to come to a succinct conclusion of what you want to do next are all the nots which fill my existence.

Then I remember that nothing, even a negative not, has to be a bad thing. A friend asked me on Wednesday what my political and idealistic views were, and was taken aback when I said I didn't know. Apparently, as I work hard that means I must know. Have I not thought about it?

Actually, the reason I don't know is exactly the reverse. I think about it too much. And then I find myself finding holes in the idea of democracy, free will and all the other great things which are the opposite of those nasty things but never seem to quite work when put into practice. I find myself finding holes in my plans for what to eat for dinner and then I have a really hard time choosing between vegetarian sausages and sweet potato falafels so I choose both (true story).

I went to a lecture on 'irony' a few days ago. The lecturer's conclusion is that great irony, in fact, great fiction, makes you lose your bearings, leaves you confused and unsure of your previous convictions. Re-assessing your decisions and coming to a thousand different conclusions are what make literature so great.

I extend that effect of literature to life. That's my excuse for the mish-mash of these writings, in particular this post which reads like a tick-box of all the things not to do to have a successful blog. But that's alright.

satanizm

2010-02-24T21:15:00.004Z

Although I don't keep a diary, when I want to write and I can't, writing about myself is the easiest way to get the pen moving (being self-centred being the only universal human quality). Other times, tense and emotional feelings which keep you up all night as they swirl in your head seem to be released when poured onto paper.

That's not what I put on this blog. That sort of writing is handwritten in a scrawl I sincerely hope is totally indecipherable, in a notebook amongst hundreds of other completely impersonal writings. While I rarely go back to anything I wrote, sometimes a line or maybe two stick in my head. Maybe they seem applicable to more than just the situation occupying my mind at the time. Maybe they sound more sincere than the melodramatic emotionally overwrought outpourings surrounding them. Or maybe I just like the way they sound.

Today, this line stuck with me:

I hope it is not immortal because I cannot kill it.

Immediately followed by the recollection of this photo I took outside a mosque last week. I wasn't writing about Satan at all. But I think they work together anyway.

What the hell has he done??

2010-02-22T17:43:00.003Z

Mark Fast's fashion show employed a mix of 'plus size' and 'regular' models (both in inverted commas as neither terms would be applicable to either groups of models anywhere other than in fashion). I am sure no-one would argue that in itself, this is a great idea, the way to go, fashion for real human beings, a varied representation, healthy body image blah blah blah.

But this:

Which can look like this:

Is a travesty.

It completely negates the idea that you don't have to be stick-thin to look good in clothes. The dresses are hideously unflattering, the wrong size. The gorgeous Crystal Renn looks terminally ill. Counter-productive, much?

bear

2010-02-21T14:57:00.004Z

Whenever I come back from Turkey (which is quite a few times as I am partly Turkish) my suitcase is always several kilos heavier than when I arrived. One of the reasons for this is because pashminas are soft, jewellery sparkles and it's all cheaper. But one of my favourite things about the city is my aunt's dress shop, more specifically, the top floor of my aunt's shop which is filled with cupboards and cardboard boxes of old dresses. I always seem to find something new, be it because I am taller, slimmer, fatter, fancier...

I fell in love with the label on this one, 'though the dress was far too big

It's like an Aladdin's cave in there. I love it. The only pain comes from the fact that I have nowhere to wear approximately 97% of it. Actually, 100% of it, but 3% of the time I can't resist taking something anyway.

Leopard print satin, brocade, sequins.

With the pretext of an animal costume party, I managed to find an excuse to take away this gorgeous chiffon dress with bee and insect illustrations.

But at the last minute, I decided I needed the sequin dress too. And since it's brown, I borrowed a huge fake fur coat and a bear hat and the sequin dress becomes an evident requirement for a bear costume. Don't you think?

Bad Blogger

2010-02-16T21:10:00.004Z

Oops, I forgot to mention I'd be away for a while last week! That is really definitely the sign of a bad blogger. I went on holiday to Istanbul on Saturday and was busy, busy all of Friday.

I am now typing this on my laptop the first night I have had alone since we got here. I have loads of photos to share with you which are all fabulously stylish, which will probably feel like a huge digression because for once I will not be digressing from the topic of style. However those will have to wait until Sunday because the laptop does not have a place in which I can insert the memory card and I left the lead for the camera at home.

For now, I have a webcam! Which I do not have on my home PC. So I trieed to get you some photos and videos of Istanbul by night, for which I suspended the laptop out of the window. I hope maybe that makes me a more dedicated, if not better blogger. But at the end of the day, I failed miserably, so that probably just makes me stupid...

See you when I get back!

oh no!

2010-02-11T18:17:00.004Z

Today's been nice. I was feeling well enough to go to school for the first time in a couple of days. I had a nice hot camomile tea on the bus there and my tongue didn't get burnt and I wasn't late. I got to go home early and sleep on the bus, and my friend wasn't cruel enough not to wake me up. That bit made me want to cry, and I'm not completely sure why.

I turned the kettle on, put a teabag in a cup, got the soya milk out, broke off a piece of biscuit and laid it on a piece of kitchen paper. Then I got distracted and started to play the piano for the first time in years and years. An hour later I realised that all my tea stuff was still out.

Strange but nice day.

I just read on a news website that designer Lee Alexander McQueen has died! My first reaction was 'oh no!'. McQueen has always been one of the clothes designers I love. He gets dark, interesting, flattering and beautiful just right. It's all very sad.

life-consuming

2010-02-06T20:23:00.002Z

This week my life has been consumed by another late TV show discovery. I don't feel so bad about this one as I know it's a one-off series and therefore won't be a regular fixture in my already over-flowing life/TV schedule/same thing.

It's Harper's Island. I am actually ridiculously late on this one, as it showed in the US in April and then in the UK in September when all my friends watched it. And it was basically made for me with my insatiable appetite for murder mysteries, be they online and interactive, CSI episodes or Agatha Christie novels. Only last Sunday I noticed that episode 3 was on so caught up on episode 1 and 2 online and subsequently overtook the TV with episodes 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 (sleeping and working very little in between).

Now I have just one episode left.

Maybe I'll get my life back?

keep me

2010-02-01T21:05:00.003Z

I am keeping the trousers!

I wore them today, and because they are so baggy there was room for leggings underneath and, my, was it a revelation not to feel the wind on your legs. To position your legs whichever way and be comfortable.

I rarely dress unusually enough to elicit comments, but today I got three trouser compliments, one mistaken 'nice skirt' and the obligatory male '...interesting trousers'.

honesty is the best policy

2010-01-30T20:57:00.004Z

For a while I have really wanted a pair of tracksuit bottoms. Sometimes, I just want to roll out of bed and feel completely comfortable. So much so that on Wednesday evening when I had to go out but was so tired I almost fell asleep on the tube, I actually wore a pair of loungewear trousers tucked into some knee-high boots.

So this weekend I decided I'd go for something halfway less ridiculous: hareem pants. I ideally want some jersey grey ones with a black waistband, but I accept that description is is pretty specific. In the end, I bought these to try on at home. I realised that until summer when they would look awesome with ballet pumps or flipflops (for all of two weeks, until it gets too cold again), the only pair of shoes I have which I think will work is this ancient pair of black ankle boots, which used to be really painful but which actually fit fine now.

Thing is, I'm not so sure any more. I can take the truth. Is it comfily cool, or just 'no, no, no and hell no, oh and what has become of you wearing loungewear to the theatre, delete your style blog NOW!'?

(photo will be back up shortly, thanks for the opinions so far)

sweat

2010-01-26T17:02:00.002Z

This long summer just gone, I was really fit. Exercise was the most thrilling part of my routine, and the most active part of my adventures.

Then real life took over, real life with hard work and hard thinking and little sleep, early mornings and dark nights, cold and comfort eating. Recently, I have come to realise, I can no longer think of myself as fit or in shape.

Yesterday I started a new lifestyle of exercise. Yes, I am busy, but that doesn't mean I don't have an hour to slot in my day at least half the time to something which will make me feel so much better. I waste at least a couple of hours a day. So my plan is this:

-Organised sports club on Mondays (boxercise, FYI, incredibly fun!)
-Outdoor run on Tuesdays, the day I finish school early
-Cross-trainer on the treadmill on Wednesdays
-Run on Saturday, Sunday, or maybe even both!

I have already completed day one and two of the plan which feels great. I almost didn't go for a run today because it was so cold, but at the last minute realised that was stupid. I warmed up quickly, but my neck was a bit chilly so I am thinking of making an investment in my fitness. It worked with the new running trainers I bought in June.

The dregs of the sales still remain in quite a few sports shops. I am thinking of ordering this:

How could I not stick to my exercise plan when that would mean such pretty pinkness languishing in my wardrobe? And more interestingly, do you have an exercise plan and how do you ensure that you don't cop out?

things fall apart

2010-01-25T16:23:00.002Z

Great book.

Rubbish jacket.

Weirdly, even though I couldn't particularly afford it in the first place, now I feel like I have twenty pounds burning a hole in my pocket. Except the sales are over and there's nothing I really need, so maybe I should think about helping to stitch things back together.

In the past, I have run and been sponsored (but ended up paying most of it myself when I couldn't get hold of several sponsors) for Cancer Research UK. My favourite charity because I hate cancer and I love life.

On Saturday I was on a train which hit into a person who jumped under the tracks. In the past, I have only thought how inconvenient it is when I go to the station and it's closed for similar reasons, something which sadly happens frighteningly frequently. But on Saturday I was really shaken and struck by the horrible state suicide leaves people behind in. Wendy Brandes' collection for fellow blogger Janet would also be a great cause to donate to, if only I had a credit card.

So right now I want to donate to the Red Cross, for obvious quake-related reasons. I was once in an earthquake, which was apparently quite strong, but I slept right through it. I am very grateful about that.

motto

2010-01-20T20:37:00.003Z

My latest motto seems to have become 'oh dear', a phrase uttered way too often in my life, and which seems to be appropriate for every single situation we find ourselves in.

My favourite motto has always been 'it's either laugh or cry'. That is definitely appropriate for every 'oh dear' situation we find ourselves in i.e. most of the time.

(I have a friend who's going through a rough patch, and oh my god, we have never laughed so much at quite how ludicrously awful a situation it is. I am trying to psychologically prepare myself for another eye examination and oh my god, I burst into tears just imagining it, which if you think about it is pretty funny, because it's just flipping your eyelids inside out. Urgh that makes me want to cry.)

Today I took delivery of a DVD of American Beauty. I have looked for a copy in every single shop which sells DVDs for basically the past two months since I first watched it twice in a row. Finally I thought to check Amazon, where it is selling for £4 and was delivered to me in four days, free. I am so excited to watch it, but I have to wait as I have promised two friends who need cheering up I will watch it with them, and I don't want to overdo it. I just hope their minds work in the same odd way as mine, because I am not sure that this is a conventionally uplifting film, even if it worked for me.

Still, my new motto looks to be: 'when the situation seems to demand the phrase "oh dear", watch American Beauty to uplift you; it will make you both laugh and cry, which is what you will feel like doing a lot of the time, hence you will probably end up watching it pretty much on repeat'.

(On the subject of style, these thoughts about mottos and the fact that I would love a tattoo have led me to wonder if any of these personal mottos would make a nice tattoo?)

promise

2010-01-17T21:52:00.004Z

It's been a while guys, I know.

I know I promised things would go back to normal.

I don't break my promises.

But you see, promises don't have an expiration date. And right now, I am just pouring all my words into everything else until I find that I have none left to type up on here. So I'm going to have to prolong the fulfillment date for this particular promise.

Until then, I have a couple of questions for you. Your answers will help me with one of the things I am pouring all my words into so that there will be more of them for this blog, so really it's in your best interests to answer!

What is the last thing you were promised?
What is the most important promise ever made to you?
What is the biggest promise that someone made to you that they broke?

Big up to...

2010-01-12T17:08:00.006Z

Foyles.

Click on the glorious photo to enter the website.

This past weekend, I took the tube all the way to Charing Cross in the snow, before realising that despite the road's name being Charing Cross Road, I was infact looking for Tottenham Court Road, and trekked down several streets in the wrong direction, in the snow, before re-orientating myself and arriving at the book mecca you see above.

(Yes, I have lived in London all my life).

(Yes, my lack of navigational skills is slightly embarrassing).

But it was all worth it for the several hours that I was able to spend unharrassed looking through the enormous selection of obscure titles they have in the particular section I was looking for. The book I was looking for, which I of course found, is so wonderful that it deserves its own blog post another time, but I am afraid that I have so much love for Foyles that bringing the book itself into it would result in gush-overload. Suffice to say, I didn't even dream that that particular book would be there, and I am sure that any title you are looking for, it's there. There are too many shelves not to hold every single book in the world on one of them.

Whilst I myself didn't buy anything, from what I saw the sale was also good. None of this 'pound off', or half-price on Katie Price's memoirs, or nonsense. And when I went in search of a copy of Pride and Prejudice, there were editions ranging from upwards of £15 to the £3 copy I bought.

The icing on the cake though, is the student discount I spied at the till, after I had paid and received my receipt. Which the shop assistant promptly refunded and resold me at 10% off.

Note: I have just realised it sounds like I am doing a sponsored speech. They're not paying me. Although if anyone at Foyles is reading this I love free books!

PS

2010-01-11T22:15:00.002Z

Please regard the following post as an extension, a PS to yesterdays, after which I promise never to bore you with my own Dear Diary stuff again.

Reading the sweet responses to my post yesterday, my immediate reaction was defensiveness. But re-reading the actual post, I realised I would have responded in exactly the same way. Cue, guilt, for while there is no way I cannot be biased, perhaps my portrayal of a friend was unfair.

It happens all the time in life. You're talking about something: a person, a poem, a TV series, and words come gushing out of your mouth that you never realised you thought. That doesn't make them less true. But it is purely your own truth, without time lent to consider other points of view, or even your feelings at any moment other than the now.

Everything I wrote happened. No exaggeration for dramatic effect. But perhaps some omission. Like my own preceding sarcastic remark, like his guilty smile afterwards.

Still, rudeness is totally not excusable and maybe I would be happier if I didn't know him.

Except that today, another friend told me how he had turned to her genuinely worried the other day and said 'no, I think I might have actually offended her. I love books. Librarians are beautiful.'

chess champion

2010-01-10T16:46:00.003Z

I have a friend and I have gone through phases of thinking I am in love with him, despite his favourite method of interaction with me seeming to be to invent as many insults as possible. (No, that does not mean he has a crush on me; he is in love with his girlfriend, he is just generally a [insert censored word here]. And isn't it great that I can write this sort of post when my blog is anonymous?)

About a week ago, he decided I dressed like a librarian. 'Fantastic,' I said 'I love books and I would love to be a librarian'.

'Oh. Actually, you're a chess-player,'

(I can't play chess)

'Fool! You're the chess-player who can't play chess!'

I admit that that day's outfits was put together in the dark and looked entirely frumpy, although not in a chess-playing librarian way, just a put-together-in-the-dark way. So I went home, and the next day I wore a button down stripy shirt. And I resolved to buy something tweed.

I am not going to listen to a badly dressed boy's judgment on me. In my brand new gorgeous (green) tweed jacket I am going to embrace and celebrate the me that he does not like, that loves books and thinks it would be awesome if she could play chess. This jacket is my armour to enter into a rebellion against my other, fawning self.

I might actually learn how to play chess.

Things I Love Thursday aka ripping off Zmaga

2010-01-07T22:23:00.005Z

I hope that this post doesn't come as too much of a shock to you all, now that you are so used to me moaning about the melancholy of life. But as I sat at my desk knowing that I should either go to sleep or revise for the test I have tomorrow, I instead read Zmaga's weekly Things I Love Thursday Post. I decided to jump onto this good mood I seem to be experiencing and write about it on here, for posterity, in a total rip off of Zmaga's posts.

It's snowing!
It's so pretty. I am starting to like the winter again; it gives me the perfect excuse to dress like the Michelin Man and not feel guilty, to drink an embarrassing number of cups of tea, my hayfever does not plague me quite so much. Best of all: the mid-week weekend.

I am not tired!!!!!
This particular thing I love is probably the reason I ended up reading blogs and writing this post. It is a direct result of the aforementioned snow which allowed the mid-week weekend and the endless cups of tea (and one cup of coffee).

I have gorgeous fabulous friends. Something which paranoid old me frequently second-guesses but which being pulled up a hill in a sledge re-affirms.

The weird thing is, a couple of weeks ago in the actual holidays, the snow was like a scourge on my social life. So maybe these are not the reasons I am in a good mood. Maybe the good mood is the reason for the appreciation.

Or maybe the real reason I am happy is because it's Thursday.

Note: I am sorry that this post is such an eyesore. I couldn't help it. I think it conveys a little bit how I feel.

short-short-short-long

2010-01-04T21:12:00.002Z

For the past two weeks over the holidays, I have woken up for lunch and have rarely been awake for more than 12 hours, apart from going out nights. The next day I'd make up for it with an 8 hour day.

This morning I set two alarm clocks to make sure I woke up on time, at 6.20 AM. Here I am, 15 hours later; I got home about 30 minutes ago. It's been a long day. Even if I'm not blogging every day, I was hoping to start commenting and reading more on other peoples' writing. Sorry, it looks like I might not be able to do that right away. But I am definitely appreciating all the insightful comments I've been getting on recent posts; I love hearing what people have to say and it spurs me on to write more. If tomorrow shapes up to be the snow day which seems possible right now, I promise I'll get reading right away! If not, maybe I'll set the alarm for 5 AM. Unlikely.

This started off as a whingy post, when it was meant to be a grateful one. Oops.

So instead, thank you, and service shall resume as soon as I start getting used to functioning on no sleep again!

jumping on the bandwagon totally late

2010-01-03T15:44:00.002Z

Today my friend and I were browsing a small local boutique. As she flicked through the black silk dresses, black satin dresses, black shiny leggings, black sequin skirts and black wool cardigans, she said that she was trying not to buy so many dark things. She prefers pastels, and apparently they're coming into fashion next season (maybe that's why so much black was on sale?).

Personally I look awful in pastels, and semi-awful but also slim in black.

But I have just watched my first episode of Mad Men, and have firmly jumped onto the Mad Men bandwagon ridiculously late. I'm like that with everything: first oblivious, then skeptical, then hesitant, then wondering if I'm too late, before finally celebrating whatever it is which has been popular for several years already. Flattery will get you most places, but if you called me trendy I'd know you were lying.

One of the main brand the boutique stocks is Darling. Their current image is as far away from the sophistication of Mad Men with its floatiness and fluffiness as possible. But the look that we saw on sale was still pastel, but much more fitted and I suddenly found myself wondering if I ought to buy the pale pink brocade shift dress and matching pale pink brocade bolero.

In the end, I decided that I couldn't afford both. And neither would be right without the other. Also, I don't work in an office with Don Draper.

2010

2010-01-01T19:16:00.004Z

It's 2010!

(Just in case you hadn't noticed)

I'm not too big on all the contemplative stuff people like to get into at this time of year. I mean, I contemplate plenty, but it's not fun. I like my New Years Eve to be fun! You've probably come across statistics labelling Christmas and New Year as the most depressed times of year. Apparently that's not true anymore, but whatever. It's still a time of contemplation and resolutions which leads to regrets, cold short days which contribute to SAD and the enormous pressure to have fun often driving people to the hospital to get their stomachs pumped.

So I'm going to try to wave the last decade goodbye swiftly and carelessly, with no attempts to fight the continual marching onwards of time or any nostalgic/regretful wallowing in memories.

Or does none of what I've just written ring true at all for you? What's your attitude to time and memories? Do you sometimes wish you were a small child again?

(Me, this time last year. It was sunny and I'd transported over a decade into the future)

material difference

2009-12-29T22:14:00.003Z

Yesterday, bored, I decided to go to the cinema. It was a toss-up between Avatar, which everyone who sees it says it is amazing, but which looks quite dull to me, and Sherlock Holmes, which didn't seem particularly good.

It turned out the rest of the world was bored too as Avatar was sold out, so we went for Sherlock Holmes. I have always had a soft spot for a mystery anyway, especially one featuring the detective Holmes. The cinema was so full that we had to sit so far forward that by the end of the film my neck was feeling rather strange. But I managed to forget all my discomforts as to my complete surprise I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. It's so fun, funny, clever and slick. I would definitely recommend it.

I came away feeling immersed in the world of the Victorians. Since, I've been revisited Conan Doyle's mysteries and even delving into some Poe. I am also really feeling a desire for some velvet or tweed, which Rachel McAdams was dressed in to play Holmes' criminal love interest, Irene Adler.

As per usual, Urban Outfitters has come up trumps (I got some amazing jeans from there a couple of days ago and haven't taken them off since) on a search for both TWEED and VELVET. But again, I have to make a choice. Silence + Noise is a great brand and all their stuff is on sale at UO right now. This includes a gorgeous short biker jacket, which is available in both tweed and velvet! That's fate, right? I've only tried the velvet one on but I have wanted a tweed jacket forever, yet a blazer has always seemed to prissy.

The tweed. The velvet isn't on the site. Just imagine this in black velour with metal shiny zips.

Which would you go for?

the cake that made christmas

2009-12-25T16:16:00.004Z

I am not a Christian. But that doesn't stop me, and plenty of other people I know from loving the festivity of Christmas and really getting into it. I have a Jewish friend who went to Midnight Mass this year!

There's so much else to get excited about. The snow, the time off to relax, the films on TV, the PRESENTS (whoever says they don't care about presents is lying...) and of course, post-Christmas, the sales. The amazing lunch.

This year a cake made Christmas for me. It was a gift from a very talented baker who owns an amazing cake shop (whose name I cannot embarrassingly remember; it is on South Kensington High Street and the cakes are spectacular).

How AMAZING is that (I know that was the third time I wrote 'amazing' in this post, but it completely is)? Magical, marvellous, magnificent. There's Jesus inside, a Snowman on the side, Santa round back and delicious biscuits on the roof! Truthfully, the snow is a bit too sugary. Quite apt, actually; I've really come to dislike snow over the past week and all the things it's stopped me from doing. I haven't started on the walls yet. It's almost too beautiful to eat.

Happy Christmas! How has your festive season been? What has made it for you?

sooo busy

2009-12-23T22:29:00.003Z

I am sooooo sorry I haven't had a chance to post; I have been soooooo busy doing sooooo many things.

Yeah right!

In actual fact, I have been pretty much snowed in. So it's not really my fault that I've managed to plow through, since Friday, an entire series of Heroes. My one saving grace is that it is season two, which due to the 2007 Writers' Strike is only eleven episodes long. Still, eleven episodes, plus the alternate episode ending on the special features disc, in five days (I had to check my calendar just now to see which day it was - that's what the holidays does to you!) is still pretty impressive in my opinion.

So yes, I have been extremely occupied. Sort of.

The truth is, I am not imaginative to find something to post about when I am sitting back enjoying unadulterated escapism. The only other active presence in my life right now: last-minute present shopping, which I also can't post about here for obvious reasons!

This is my life. Exciting, huh?

Watching a hero watching a villain

girl with glasses

2009-12-20T16:16:00.002Z

I don't feel very me right now.

There's the new haircut, which I love. And then yesterday, I picked up my new glasses.

I still haven't had any photos taken of me since all these changes, so I took some. My skin looks awful in all of them. I feel so bad for all those people who get acne more than once a month. People with perfect skin always, feel bad for us lesser mortals!

Still, if I mess with the contrast once I have uploaded the photos, I sort of look alright. Like a completely different person, but spot-free. I look so different anyway.

Can you tell that the brightness has been adjusted a lot?

On top of that, I'm feeling remarkably serene. And I went for a run in the snow today. Who has abducted old me???

a serious splash on something you won't see

2009-12-19T22:59:00.003Z

A couple of months ago I was a little bit slimmer post-Summer than I am now mid-Snow. I felt body confident enough to go bra shopping. We all know how depressing bra shopping can be for one's body image, but I felt brave enough.

Nevertheless, I still came away feeling down. The only bra which I felt truly fitted great had been the most expensive, by far. Several others with similar colours, shapes, straps, sizes and padding and lower prices were all somehow wrong.

Today I went in a shopping search for a party dress. I hate clothes shopping this close to the sales so I stuck to the rails already on sale. I found plenty of gorgeous scarves, shirts, jumpers, even lovely daytime dresses, but every dress that looked nice on the hanger was a failure on. It doesn't help when you want a velvet dress that your budget restricts you to thin, stretchy ones which make you look pregnant: pot belly and legs bulging with water retention.

I decided to look for a bra. My bra. It's false economy, I decided, to buy a dress the same price as the bra which I will wear once. Better to buy the undergarment which will make the overgarments I already own look good. Having made this decision, I got angry then infuriated as I was unable to find it.

One different shopping venue an hour away later, I tried it on. Actually, I took three other alternatives into the changing room and tried them all on first, hoping that one of them would look great. They didn't.

Thus runs the (abbreviated) story of how I came to spend £35 on a t-shirt bra. I don't feel guilty; I earned the money and I spent the same I would have on a rubbish sale party dress. Still, my mother's reaction was that I was being completely ridiculous; but she hasn't seen the bra yet.

And she doesn't know how it makes me feel; how it is the first bra I have bought not just because of comfort, not just because it minimises the boobs, not just because it stops them from moving when I run, not just because it's a pretty colour, not just because it fits well. It's all of those things! I know most people object to spending more on something people can't see as you stroll down the street than the bag you carry on your shoulder. It's no status symbol or style statement. But I still think it's worth spending on, because of how it makes me feel. I'm interested to hear what you think; do you spend more money on what others can see, or on what is personal to only you - not just underwear (obviously a lot of lingerie is not meant to be just for the owner) but a book, a new set of headphones, a dressing gown, a nice pen?

keen christmas

2009-12-16T22:18:00.004Z

Normally, the wait for Christmas seems to drag on forever. This year, on the other hand, Christmas seems to have snuck up on me from behind and pounced, nine days too early.

Today really did feel like Christmas.

The only sufficient way to describe the level of cold today (degrees celsius not being of any consequence here, of course) to any girl interested in fashion is the fact that I wore a fleece. Yes, you read right, my deeply unstylish normally relegated the confines of house or tent, navy blue Berghaus fleece. That's how cold it was.

Oh, and also, it snowed. White Christmas!

I had Christmas dinner, complete with little green balls I didn't recognise. Part of my brain wondered 'what's this?', the mouth part me of popped one in before promptly spitting it out. Normally I wouldn't be so unladylike, but I feel that maybe this one occasion is acceptable seeing as it was after all my Formal Introduction to Brussel Sprouts.

According to the townsfolk of Who-ville (whom I watched today), Christmas isn't about the presents. Still, it did feel like the only thing lacking from today was presents. I was surprised and overly squeely when presented with this gift bag:

Super posh bath salts. I am not really into luxurious bathing, but I found that Christmas springing itself upon me so unexpectedly had taken a lot out of me, my hair still smelt over-whelmingly of product from yesterday's haircut and the added stress of a family member's accident and waiting for news all induced me to try out my new present.

Now I really have to go; late-night present wrapping for Secret Santa tomorrow calls. Doesn't feel much like Christmas anymore.

(SHORT)

2009-12-15T18:12:00.002Z

I'll keep this short.

(Very short)

Today I played a fun game over lunch!

Tea, tomato soup and tequila is a combination I have never tried before, but it's surprisingly nice.

(Fortunately) I had to leave pretty early as I had a haircut booked. I ran for the bus. Left my pashmina on the bus. Got there on time. Requested haircut.

I probably drank my drinks in a slightly more alcoholic ratio than I had originally thought. I now have short hair.

(Very short).

I love it!

(Also loving the tag for this post - 'beauty potions')

PTSD

2009-12-13T08:00:00.001Z

Yesterday I had an optician's appointment to discuss switching from daily contact lenses, which are nauseatingly expensive, to two-weeklies. The optician had the samples laid out ready and waiting for me and everything.

She asked if I have any allergies.

Erm, terminal hayfever. Oh, and about a month ago I developed another super-fan allergy to cats. Seriously sad stuff. Anyway, what were you saying?

You need to check under my eyelids? Um.. fine. Woaaah... yellow stain eyedrops! OK, I think I can deal. You may need to just splash the drops onto my closed eyes for a bit though until some of the stain gets in.

That wasn't too bad. So, what's the verdict?

WHAT? You are touching my eyes... I'm OK, I'm breathing, NO I'M NOT URGH OH MY GOD I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS MY EYELID IS INSIDE OUT.

I know you said you were going to check under my lids But I didn't realise this is what you meant.

Phew, oh my eye still feels funny, but it's over, I lived, I never have to do that again. I can't believe some people choose to do this as a party tricks.

What???? My other eye???? Please, no, you've already seen one isn't that enough, please have mercy, I am begging you....

I am pretty sure the trauma that followed really was not necessary as my optician had already decided that I was not suitable for two-weekly lenses because the build-up under my right eyelid wasn't healthy. But of course, we had to conclude that the same was true for my left eyelid.

The hazy details of the rest of the day can probably be blamed on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Such advanced PTSD that I can't remember what my new glasses look like. Yes, that's right, new glasses! To compensate for my reduced ability to wear contacts frequently and my worsening eyesight, which completely sucks. All I can remember is that the new glasses do not suck; they are beautiful and tortoiseshell and a little bit subtle and a little bit in your face and whoever said you can't treat stress with treats wasn't getting the right treats.

so much...

2009-12-12T19:43:00.003Z

For everlasting serenity.

I have been too embarrassed to pluck up the courage to post this last week.

I failed abysmally at the unruffled calm thing I was going on about.

I even failed to keep the things I lost unfound, finding every single thing I was talking about here the day after I wrote about losing them. Even in my successes I find failure!

I went shopping alone again today, which did not bear the fruit of any furry gilets, but a couple of botched christmas presents which I am convinced the recipients will hate.

I failed all of the above in the most comfortable leggings known to womankind.

Hence why I was too embarrassed to post.

Lost property

2009-12-07T20:50:00.003Z

Everywhere I go, I seem to leave bits of me behind.

The city is strewn with lost umbrellas, a great proportion of which are probably mine.

I bet at least one of those is mine.

My wardrobe is still black cardigan-less.

Every single pashmina I own, has left and returned to my possession at least once. It's uncanny; my scarves really are like carrier pigeons, leaving my neck cold for a few days before showing up, hanging on a hook in my form room, draped on the radiator in a random classroom, once I found a pashmina atop a hedge on the way to school.

Sadly I am not so lucky with essential study supplies, in the past month having lost my pencil case, this weekend being unable to find my Maths textbook and today realising that I have left an important folder behind at some point today.

It's somewhat dangerous, then perhaps, that I am currently in possession of three sets of tickets; one in the book I am reading, one in the other book I stopped reading, and oh shit I just realised I have no idea where the third ticket is.

shopping in the dark

2009-12-05T18:52:00.002Z

Today I had 50 minutes to myself in Covent Garden. It was dark, it was raining, I was alone.

First stop: M&S for an umbrella. I lost two umbrellas in one day a couple of weeks ago, and my beloved huge one was too broken to go any longer.

After that, what followed was possibly the best shopping I have ever done. I knew what I wanted to get, but there was also nobody else there to insist on going in here, and here, ooh and here to spend that gift card they still have, so I had time to enter whichever shop took my fancy too.

I came away with a christmas present, some lip balm and a lovely new jumper from a cute boutique called Red Rockin' Robin. Now on my wishlist is one of their gorgeous fake fur gilets. I'm going back, by myself.

BEAUTY I LOVE IT

2009-12-01T22:20:00.003Z

I barely recognise myself. I don't understand what the hell has come over me.

By standard terms, I have had a weekend from hell. Metaphorical rejection has been rife, even if nobody has said 'no', I have been uninvited to THREE events, not chosen as the winner for a competition which was important to me, and watched my unrequited love drift further and further out of reach into the arms of another girl. I know that all sounds incredibly melodramatic but let me tell you now: it is all completely true and unexaggerated. I can write all this down in plain undisguised facts because, quite simply, I am fine.

Of course, writing that last paragraph out, I would be lying if I said I didn't feel little twangs of something which I can't quite put my finger on, but which isn't nice. But the main thing is that I haven't collapsed into tears. Tears which I am not bottling up because I am experiencing the weirdest sensation of not caring. Yes, I did write a wonderfully affirming post on this last Tuesday, but continuing in the spirit of total honesty, it didn't make much difference. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday's shitness were all just self-denyingly so.

Then on Saturday I got a film out from the library, one which had been intriguing me for a while but which I haven't got round to seeing because the blurb always seemed depressing, something I definitely DON'T need. And not depressing in a usefully detached from reality way, either, but real truthful depressing. But I watched it anyway. How wrong was I?????

Again I am going to border on melodramatic histrionics in just a moment, but I don't care. THIS FILM SPOKE TO ME. Everything it said about the ultimate search in life being for meaning and happiness all directly linked to beauty is exactly what I believe. With that in mind, how much more uplifting could the message be that beauty is everywhere? Even in plastic bags floating in the wind?

Even in a girl who is insecure and wants a boob job, even in a girl who has never had sex?

Even in a middle-aged man who has lost everything?

Everywhere. So logic must conclude that my life must be simply bursting with beauty and it doesn't matter that I have been rejected a few times. There is no point putting on a fake front; 'In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times' is completely untrue and a lie in itself.

But even if that train of thought is somewhat logical, I still can't explain how I got the essential message which really uplifted me. I'm walking around with a feeling of 'stop thinking; everything is going to be fine in the end' which has come from a film where things really turn out the complete opposite of fine.

That's just what I heard when I watched the film. Does this ever happen to you? Have there been moments when you have been struggling a bit and then something completely unexpected which doesn't make much sense comes and changes things?

I just thought you might like an update, and maybe even a suggestion if you have found yourself feeling as I have described, or experiencing what I have, two categories which I am 100% sure every single person on the planet would fit into both of.

PS: By the way, in this little essay I bashed out instead of my coursework, I forgot to mention the film's name. American Beauty if you hadn't already worked that out.