The root of all evil?

Normally I don't like giving people money as a gift; I enjoy buying presents too much. But when my friend asked for a monetary gift for her birthday to contribute to her foreign trip fund, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to get a little crafty and add a personal touch to my gift.

I haven't had the time to make anything recently but this morning I was happily free so I decided to use one of my favourite techniques; sewing on card. I am ridiculously unable to use a sewing machine; I seem to break mine every time I try to use it, so sewing on card is a lovely alternative and oddly therapeutic.

If we're going to have to let money continue to exist, we might as well wrap it up nicely.

The death of gingervitis

Today, la wonderful Belette Rouge blogger inspired me to write about the plight of ginger kids with her post about the colour orange. For many years, adults have sung the praises of my fiery mane and made me promise 'to never, ever die your hair some crazy colour when your hormones start rendering you temporarily insane'. Yet, simultaneously my peers continually teased me, although of course I knew along that 'they're just jealous of your pre-Raphaelite style curls, honey'.

So when I came across the International Ginger Kids Foundation, I was inspired to write a speech about it for an oral assignment at school. And today, when I read La Belette Rouge's post, I went in search of the IGFK's website: www.gingerkids.org I was surprised to find that it was no longer in existence. Here is the IGFK's bebo page, which gives you some sort of idea about the site's content.


I have mixed feelings about the death of the Ginger Kids website. Whilst it was certainly a useful source, perhaps now the death of the website means the death of the disease. Maybe now we can all be finally free to embrace the orange. Anyway, here are some excerpts from my top-grade-speech:

According to the IGFK, or the International Ginger Kids Foundation, Gingervitis is a serious hereditary disease, of which the main symptom is having red hair. Those suffering from Gingervitis have no souls, and if bitten by a Ginger Kid, it says on the IGFK website, the victim must ‘immediately wash the wound with soap and water, apply alcohol or peroxide if available and call their local poison control for assistance’

...

One example of the aim to undermine the confidence of redheads everywhere. is the name given to the so-called disease, of which red hair is the main symptom; Gingervitis. On the surface it may seem harmless, but there are negative connotations to this word. When I originally spoke out about my dislike for the IGFK and the disease of ‘Gingervitis’, I was presented with some very surprised expressions, which I could not understand. One particularly honest friend explained this to me later; asking why on earth I felt so passionately about gum disease. I realised that everyone thought I was referring to Gingivitis, a condition where the gums become inflamed due to plaque build up. This infuriated me further; it seems unnecessarily malicious to have such a close similarity between the terms for a hair colour and a gum disease.

...

It is unknown who exactly started off this subtle campaign against red hair, but this is not a matter of importance. The important question which plagues the minds of all redheads is; why? The answer, I feel, lies in the following statistic, taken from the research for a home hair dye kit:

‘Of the women who choose to dye their hair at home, the most choose to become redheads’

Therein lies the answer; it’s envy.

Loving the art

Yesterday was the Frieze Art Fair opening. I'm not planning on going this year; I almost got the opportunity to get a cheaper ticket courtesy of the school for tomorrow but things didn't go exactly to plan, so I decided to give it a miss. I have to admit, that even if I had ended up going with my school, I wouldn't have been 100% happy because they're making the art students wear uniform. And however superficial this may make me sound, one of the best things about Art Fairs is the clothes on the art-lovers' backs.

Last year, the Sartorialist came to London to photograph these fashionable folk.

And all the showbiz sites have pictures of the slebs at last night's opening.

I was also going to go to Zoo Art Fair, until I realised it's the same weekend. Zoo attracts an equally stylish, if less star-studded crowd.

I mean, to be honest, who cares about the actual art these days?

Worrywarts

Link One

Link Two

Link Three

Link Four

Link Five

The Guardian did a survey of how people's lifestyle habits have been affected by all this. One person answered:

'I've been watching the news less'

I'm not surprised! As I've mentioned before, I've never particularly liked the concept of money and now I'm starting to like it less and less. Think about how humans have evolved from a bunch of organisms living on a mass of rock and some other stuff (or from the naked and penniless Adam and Eve, depending on which version you believe) to such a stupendously complex species of multiple races, classes and lives. None of us truly know if there's any reason or ulterior motive for us being on Earth, some philosophers even argue that we're not here at all, it's just one big dream - I haven't even tried to get my head around that one. How have we managed to get into a state where we're all relying on this invented concept of money so much? Especially when even now it is becoming increasingly clear that money can just be magicked out of nowhere, at least temporarily? I know that to say 'just get rid of money - the entire concept' is terribly simplistic as well as unrealistic but right now, even more than a few months ago, I think it would be great.

how are you?

Whenever somebody asks 'how are you?', the almost invariable response is 'OK, thanks' or 'good, thanks' or 'alright'. So when you aren't actually alright, it can be difficult to know what to say. All of a sudden the reply becomes far more unnatural and awkward. Wouldn't it be so much easier if it was more normal to say how we actually feel?

But the truth is, that even if one moment I am far from alright, I know that a couple of hours later, my mood will have brightened considerably. Either it's friends or routine, which occupy my mind so much that there's little time left to feel sad or alone.


I took this picture on holiday a couple of months ago. It was a very special day, and being so isolated amongst the water like this was an extraordinary feeling; a sense of awe which makes the question 'how are you?' far less important.

If my honest reply to this question isn't exactly what I want it to be, I know I just have to ride it out a little bit longer.

Perfecto

So... this post didn't go exactly as planned yesterday. Hopefully it will fare better today...

Today I was tagged by enc, the wonderful writer of brilliant blog observationmode to do the 'Four thingy' tag as she called it. I'm not sure what the exact name for this particular tag is, but I do know that I'm of course very happy to do it because, after all, all bloggers love to talk about themselves. The tag also had perfect timing, because I wasn't planning on posting today with a lack of inspiration and time to do a proper post. Perfecto! So-

1. Four places that I go to over and over:
-My school
-My local Tube stop
-Oxford Street
-The library

2. Four people who e-mail me regularly:
-The Facebook Team
-Gwyneth Paltrow
-My father
-My cousin

As you may have gathered, my e-mail account is a little dusty.

3. Four places I would rather be right now:

-New York
-Venice
-Paris
-More realistically perhaps: shopping in Selfridges.

4. Four of my favorite places to eat:

-Polish cafe in super posh Primrose Hill
-Wagamamas
-EAT.
-Leon's

5. Four people I'm tagging:

-The Clothes Horse
-Disneyrollergirl
-Square Old Soul
-Big City Bumpkin

6. Four TV shows I watch over and over:

-CSI
-House
-Jane Eyre, the BBC adaptation. <3
-The Book Group

Born in a different era

Having read and loved the novel Brideshead Revisited, I was worried that the new film adaptation, which has received mixed critical responses, would disappoint. But when I watched it today, I enjoyed it very much; I thought the acting was impressive and the script fairly sound (although this was one aspect which didn't quite live up to Evelyn Waugh's fine example). The one thing which I really did enjoy, and which made the two and a half hours feel much shorter was the absolute beauty of the film. If you scroll through my 'movie magic' posts using the tags, you'll see that my earlier posts were really centered on the sheer beauty of some of my favourite films. Recently, I haven't seen anything quite so cinematically magnificent in quite a long time, which is why I found this film such an absolute treat.

I have never had very much of a desire to live in the 20s/30s which have always seemed very oppressive, if also wonderfully romantic. But after watching the lives of the glamorous Flyte aristocracy, I would love to journey back a hundred odd years...

Julia's (played by Hayley Atwell - gorgeous and refreshingly curvy! Great interview here) outfits are definitely the fashion highlight; scene after scene of fantastic outfits and shots perfectly capture the extravagence of the book so that that I really can't complain.

A little bit of glamour...

There's something about cold winter days that make me want to get dressed all glamorous, a little bit dark... in the same way that summer inspires me to wear florals. Cue gold, black, silver, snakes, studs and red nails:

And today the glamorous touches of my outfit fitted right in with my artsy lifestyle. A trip to Sloane Square resulted in me starting a headcount of designer bags. I think I saw 5 or 6 Chanels. We took a detour to the Saatchi Gallery to see a fantastic exhibition of new Chinese art. Art galleries are great for people-watching, as well as the art of course.

Then it was The Royal Court Theatre to see Now or Later, which was actually an extremely thought-provoking and remarkable play and definitely not just a beautiful star vehicle. There was a mini panic before the show when I realised I'd lost my ticket; luckily the hot box office assistant was kind enough to print me off a reprint after ascertaining that I was not a lying ticket-stealer.

And after the play, guess who we met? Very charming and even better looking face to face. I felt very proud of myself for not asking for an autograph or photograph; wouldn't we much prefer to hold an intellectual conversation than ask for some sort of tourist's memento like some commoner... it's so much more glamorous isn't it?

Cuteness!!!

With all the horrible talk of troubling economics, financial meltdowns, fears of depression etc and then all the murders, missing people and general crime on top of that, it can be hard to sit through the news with a smile. So it was especially lovely to read this article on the BBC about a weatherman's on-air proposal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7663350.stm

I dare you to watch it without a smile creeping onto your face!

Want, want, want

When referring to the items which one hopes to purchase in the near future, it is difficult to know which verb to use. Many people, for example, way over-use the word 'need' on a wishlist. I need a new red high-waisted skirt. I need a new pair of boots. I need a new bag. The word 'wishlist' itself means that it can only really be a list of items which you desire, not items which are essential for you to continue living. A high-waisted skirt would definitely be useful in accentuating my waist, and a red one would greatly increase the versatility of a few of my tops, but I will not go butt-naked without it. I already have a handful of pairs of warm winter shoes, including two boots. They may be slightly dated and not go with all my outfits but I certainly won't get frostbite this winter on account of a lack of shoes. And it would be nice to have a gorgeous, roomy leather bag to carry all my junk but I already have one of those, plus a backpack if needs be.

So is there anything I really truly need? There is a whole lot of practical, unexcitingly ugly stuff that I could do with: a new school skirt to name one. The zip's broken on my current one but I am loathe to get a new one when I have less than a year of the horrid uniform left (yay for that!)

Some new running leggings, thermals and sports tops would be a lovely addition to my sports wardrobe. But in all honesty, my homeless-chic tracksuit bottoms and baggy tops are doing the job absolutely fine. And I would love some new tights; my beloved grey ribbed ones are becoming awfully worn and the equally loved opaques are slowly pilling to death. But without a nice new pair of boots, I don't seem to be wearing skirts all too much in the current weather.

So, it seems that even the least extravagant of purchases aren't really necessary at all. I don't need some useful and dull basics any more than a frivolous high-waisted red skirt. It's all just want, want, want isn't it?