Tangible

First of all, when I went back online today after a hectic week and read the half-hearted attempt at a post on Monday, I felt a little embarrassed. After all, haven't we all been taught that it's quality over quantity? But I didn't have a chance to write anything yesterday either, so maybe it's a good thing that I got round to putting up a little bit of eye-candy whilst I had a second.

And today, when I got home and realised that I had about three different essays to write, I wasn't sure if I would have time again, so I thought I'd just do a quick little update on my foray into running a few weeks ago!

I've been doing a proper several mile run only once a week, but walking every day and a couple of miles on a Friday. Still, this was nowhere near what people who are training achieve, so I wasn't really expecting any progress for a good few months. But what one of my teachers said seems to be true, the difference really does become tangible very quickly. Today for example, I managed to run 3 miles continuously for the first time, and then another 1 mile jog/walk which I haven't been able to achieve before.

Still, when I was told that a marathon would be doing the lap that I did 4 times, 26 times, I saw that I would still have a very long way to go.

Has anyone else just starting running when their only previous experience was walking and running to catch the bus?

Rite of Passage

Many teenage girls go through some sort of fixation with a beautiful male celebrity. The choices vary greatly.

Okay, maybe they don't vary so much.

But I seem to have a problem with choosing just one Hollywood hunk, which is probably a good thing since my levels of obsession rise so sharply, so quickly, that I'd begin to fear for the star's safety if there wasn't such a large supply of new diversions. And one of the best things about living in London, is that you can often see your celebrity crush in the flesh. Move over Josh Hartnett, here's who I'll be chumming up with this weekend:


Rising star, Eddie Redmaybe has been in loads of films recently, and most recently seen as Angel Clare in Tess of the D'Urbervilles on BBC1. You got to see quite a lot of him, quite literally. A couple of my friends saw the play he's in right now, and it is reported that he is very friendly and very willing to take photos. This bodes well.

Sustenance

Yes, it’s a sad thought, but I sometimes find comfort in the truth that it's inevitable that almost every single teenage girl out there has hang-ups about her body. One of the slimmest of my friends, for example, maintains the belief that her stomach and thighs are huge. The other day, exasperated, I pointed out to her that the width of her thighs was less than the length of a biro, whilst mine was greater. She flat out refused to accept that her thighs were thinner than the biro, until I wasn’t sure anymore if she was joking and actually has some form of body dysmorphia. I can only think of two people who do seem genuinely pleased with their shapes, and once I started thinking about it, I realised how ridiculous it was that so many of us have come to despise the body which thanklessly keeps us alive. I can see that there are also plenty of adults with similar ideas about their bodies, but I can also see that it seems to become less of an issue when jobs, money, serious relationships and other more important things begin to take up more thought and time.

Still, at the moment, it is difficult to see an end to the ultimately bizarre relationship that so many of us have with food. How strangely messed up is it that lack of proper nutrition is such a serious issue for both people with eating disorders and those who simply don’t have access to food, yet I can never seem to enjoy a beautiful, indulgent and tasty treat without the experience being disfigured by guilt?

And that’s the worst part for me. I can live with thighs bigger than a pencil, etcetera; in fact it’s rare that I can allow my teenage insecurities to get the better of me in terms of my general mood and eating habits (this really only happens on holiday, when my physical activity is approximately nil, my portion sizes have gone through the roof and I have to wear a bikini). I just really, really want to be able to love the food that sustains me without even a shadow of a whisper of ‘are you really hungry?’ There may only be two ways to go about this: time-travel back to my childhood, or forwards into my fully-fledged adulthood. Of course, both of these are impossible, so I began thinking of the ways in which I enjoy other things.

Yesterday, when I was eating my breakfast, I noticed how beautiful it looked. At the risk of being entirely ludicrous, I took a photo of it on my phone. Perhaps appreciating the aesthetic beauty of food would aid our relationship. It may be entirely ridiculous, but later on I saw a macaroon, and it sparkled so brilliantly that I took a photo of that too. I’m not convinced that it actually worked, but it’s more likely than a time-travelling machine..

Gloopy

I can't remember where I first heard about Gwyneth Paltrow's new website GOOP but I remember how fun I found visiting it and my initial reaction. I have a feeling that the name may come from Ms. Paltrow's initials... maybe her middle names begin with O?

Go on the website and click anywhere, and you'll get Gwyneth Paltrow's mission statement. One line reads 'I love being in spaces that are clean and feel nice'. The slogan is 'Nourish your inner aspect'. What does that actually mean?

Anyway I just had to sign up to the newsletter after getting such a great laugh out of it. But then I felt sort of bad for being so harsh on it, because is this website so different from my blog or anyone else's? I mean, I may have laughed at the name 'GOOP' (come on, gloop... gloopy ... poop... not exactly the best name) but prettyfaceshelpinraces isn't exactly a stroke of genius either.

And I got my first newsletter today. It's nice to get e-mail by Gwyneth Paltrow.

UPDATE: this was the into to the e-mail. I hope you don't mind, Ms. Paltrow.

SMILE!

Whoever invented the smile, deserves some sort of amazing prize. If they were a blogger, they would definitely deserve this lovely blogging award, which the beautiful Mettch of beautiful blog La Route du Mimosa passed on to me.

Visiting her blog last night, I saw that the award had been waiting for me for a couple of days, but I was immensely grateful that I'd only seen it then, when I needed a reason for a smile. :)

I think most of the bloggers I visit have already received this lovely, lovely award so I'm going to cheat and give it right back to everyone on my daily reading blog list. I am not exclusive about my blog list, it's merely for my own convenience so that I don't need to remember the URLs of the blogs I visit, but that does mean that I love every single one of the blogs on there.

Also, I promise to award this award to whover invented the smile, as soon as they set up a blog.

Update: as a thanks for the lovely award and smile to Mettch, I thought I'd post a pic I took a couple of weeks ago of one of the dresses I was debating wearing to the theatre (I chickened out and wore a skirt; they all look so dressed up!).

Comfort Reading

I know that every ounce of my blues right now is utterly down to hormones and I have not one single reason to feel at all down. Nevertheless, I can't remember smiling this evening and as a smiley person I am worried.... comfort eating never seems to work...

Having just finished a rather depressing book, and yesterday embarking upon the fun-fest that is Anna Karenina, today I reached out for some comfort reading. I know that what with all the wonderful wonderful stuff out there I should really be continuing to build my reading foundations, therefore I should not waste time re-reading yet, and if I were to then re-reading Harry and the Wrinklies is not the book to choose, not being mind-nourishing, intellect-building yada yada yada. But I'm really looking forward to going to bed and starting this book for the 100000th time.

Soppiness ahead...

When I hear the phrase 'outlet for your anger' or 'emotional outlet' or 'creative outlet' I often feel like I want to hurl. But sometimes, taking your mind off actual life and immersing yourself in a world where the only thing that matters is your creation, being as utterly perfect as possible, can be very calming.

I felt like changing my 'What's making me happy' picture. Surely a bag can't make a person feel happy for over a week. But as I looked through my recent pictures, nothing really stood out. I suppose I've been in an odd mood lately; it feels like everybody around me is in an odd mood too.

But then I went into the folder in My Pictures labelled 'CARDS' and looking at my own creations, seeing something I can be pretty sure that I do well, I felt a little egotistical but also quite happy. My latest card, which is actually, shamefully over a month old is the one I put up to the right. It also felt like a good choice, because love is something which always makes people happy, right?

Walking mannequins

I don't think I've ever done a catwalk related post before and I'm not about to start. I do enjoy seeing the beautiful clothes but I've never been able to suffer the endless stream of photos of show, after show, after show.... clicking away on style.com until the most beautiful dress doesn't even raise a flicker of excitement.

But when I saw the pictures of the Margiela show in one of those daily free London papers, I stopped. Of course, it is sensationalist, you just have to look at how many normally fashion-dead papers have covered this show. There's also the whole enigmatic element since Martin Margiela never has his photo taken. Nevertheless, I found the idea of making models look like faceless mannequins a fascinating idea. People always argue that the reason models are so skinny is so that the clothes hang as they would on a mannequin; there are no curves to manipulate the garment or detract attention from it. Normally I poo-poo this idea; why do they then choose startingly beautiful and ofter amazonian looking uber-models? Why not actually use robotic mannequins?





Still, if this was Margiela's intention, it didn't exactly work, with the creepy looking models getting more press coverage than the actual collection.

All for only 95 cents..

If somebody asked me what my favourite book was, I would have some serious issues trying to answer it; there are simply too many wonderful stories out there to pick one. If they narrowed it down a little, asking 'What's the funniest book you every read?' or 'Which book can you read endlessly?' or 'Which interesting book have you read lately?' I would find it much easier. If they asked me which books have been able to make me cry, there would only be one or two.

The book I finished this morning (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey) made me cry. I'd been intending to read it for quite a while, because it's been sitting on my bookshelf for god knows how long. In fact, I think the copy I read was published over 30 years ago, and has been read plenty of times, as you can tell it by its condition:

Halfway through reading, the back cover fell off. When my aunt bought this book, it cost 95 cents; I can't really think of a better way she could have spent it.

Obviously, this is a very acclaimed book and so I wasn't particularly surprised that I loved it so much (if you haven't read it - I urge you go read it now!) but it did get me thinking about what it is that makes a certain story 'speak' to you. Is it simply a very well-written novel? Or are there certain elements which make it more likely that the book will become my favourite book?

One thing which struck me is that in the past I have also loved (enjoyed is not the right word) books where the words themselves are beautiful. I would love to be able to read every language in the world, simply so that I could read stories in the language written by their author. How tough would it be to translate a book like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?! Another thing is that the stories that always stay with me are the ones that made me cry - and as I said they are very rare. So it is co-incidence that the passage which made me cry in this book is also the most poetical? Sadder things definitely occur in the course of this story, but Chief Bromden's post-shock ramblings were what moved me to tears.

Ting. Tingle, tingle tremble toes, she's a good fisherman, catches hens, puts 'em inna pens . . . wire blier, limber lock, three geese in a flock . . . one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest . . . O-U-T spells out . . . goose swoops down and plucks you out.

In the recent spirit of question-asking, which elements are what make you love a book?

Love Poem

A couple of my favourite poems are very wordy and evocative and passionate and epic as well as very beautiful. Maybe this is because I find it hard to get emotionally attached to a short one or two liner, which I can appreciate but which I can't get lost in. One of the hardest things about reading poems is that you don't get to spend very much time with them before they're over, and a longer more elaborate one is therefore preferable, to me anyway. One poem however, I always remember get drawn back to. Despite it being very short, it pulls me in every time.

Love Poem by Lemn Sissay

You remind me
define me
incline me.

If you died
I'd.

Which are your favourite poems?