invent

Oooooops. I got through six out of the seven days of my blog-a-day challenge, then failed. Does this call to anyone's mind that blonde joke about the blonde, brunette and the redhead who are stranded on an island?

Read it here. Now swap blonde out for redhead.

Anyway, I thought maybe I should invent some sort of excuse, but I am way too honest for that. Still, I would like to salvage some of the challenge with the fact that I did actually take a photo yesterday, and had every intention of writing the accompanying post.



I was looking for my hat, which has been AWOL for as long now as it has been cold and rainy enough for me to want to wear it, and for me to realise that it is nowhere to be found. But every time I had looked for it up until now, I was running really late and so normally gave up my search after a couple of seconds. This time, I emptied out every drawer I thought it might be in.

I didn't find the hat, but I did find the navy bag you see above. I bought it around March 2008 for a trip to Paris; the specification was: leather, can carry loads of crap, at least a little chic, and cheap. This £45 Topshop offering ticked all those boxes so I ignored the likelihood that it wasn't going to last very long. Sure enough, by the time I had returned from Paris, the rain had completely transformed its colour from blue to teal, but I was OK with that. But then a little while later the handle came off, irreparably. Still, I couldn't quite make the move and throw it away; I still like the colour and the shape and it carried far too many memories of the trip to Paris. So I left it in one of those very full drawers.

When I came across it yesterday, I was looking for my hat, but also trying to decide which bag to wear in the rain. When I saw this, it seemed ludicrously obvious that I could just tie a scarf through the rings and still wear it. Moreover, I had a silk sort of scarf that I got free and never wear, whose shape and colours would work perfectly.

For a while, I felt like a crazy inventive inventor, until I realised that it was really a very obvious idea.

perfect day?

Today everything has been perfect for me really. A super quick commute; no traffic. My working day finished 2 1/2 hours after it started. I took out two good DVDs from the library, finished a great play and bought a trashy magazine which came with a great gift. I chatted to some fabulous friends, both in person and on the phone. I got home and there was a parcel awaiting me.

All through that, I felt too drained to actually revel in the fact that this Friday the 13th was actually a bit of a perfect day, but not tired enough to go to sleep. So now I feel like a bit of an idiot having not gone for a run when I had the chance and not going out tonight.

I almost don't deserve my good chance.

On the penultimate day of this blogging challenge I set myself on Saturday, I show you this:


Both are hotter pink in the flesh. You know how I feel about pink if you have read even a third of the posts on this blog, and in fact, since my search function doesn't work, I am going go create a special tag for all posts which reference the power of pink!

What you see, in flashed-out pink, are my Etre gloves from LibertyLondonGirl's giveaway! Thank you to both Etre and LLG! I am très excited about this! And I love them a lot a lot a lot! As you can probably tell from multiple exclamation marks!

And matching them serendipitously perfectly is my new nail polish which 'tho not as free as the gloves, came free with a £2 magazine that I would otherwise no way have purchased. Still, nail polish for £2 instead of £10.50 and a fun hour's read. In fact, I am sort of tempted to buy the magazine three more times for the other colours. Anybody fancy a free copy of Glamour, without the nail polish?

Hmm, this week's posts have been much longer than the snapshots and witty one-liners (which I am still deluded that I can produce, even though people keep telling me otherwise...) I was intending. Maybe that's why I have been so unproductive this week.

cannot be/read

Today I almost failed my 7 day challenge to take a photo a day on my digital camera and post it on this blog, when I inserted the memory card into the camera and the words flashed across the screen ERROR: MEMORY CARD CANNOT BE READ.

Thankfully I remembered the eternally useful and used by IT Technicians everywhere (I like to imagine that all IT Technicians operate in the same way as Moss and Roy of 'The IT Crowd') - 'Have you tried turning it off and on again?'. Hey, presto, the memory card reads!

And so do I (argh, how cringy punny was that?).


These are my current reads:

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro which is very strange and still completely inexplicable on page 127/500 and something. I went to the book shop in search of a thin book which I could carry around with me as I read it, but I love Ishiguro's writing so much and the blurb had me gripped. Target fail, but succesful read.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee. Much easier to read than the eponymous author's books, but that doesn't make it less clever. I like reading plays sometimes because they are fantastic works in their own right but loads of the amazing classics are sadly rarely performed.

Both very frightening in different ways. Have you read either? What did you think? And don't ruin the ending if you have!

don't take it off

Me, Day Five (aka I am soo shocked this is lasting this long!)

The purple pendant you see was a present from my aunt about five years ago. I like the design because the chain cuts through the stone, and I love the colour because purple is just so awesome, so regal. It came with the chain.

My mother gave me the other pendant when I was tiny and I have always for some reason been mesmerised by the small swinging heart inside. It didn't come with a chain and thus I have lost it a couple of times.

The chain you see is so thin that it has a couple of knots in it. I don't like thick chains and besides, even if I did, it would look plain wrong with the daintiness of my pendants. The most recent time that I lost and found my heart pendant, I decided to sling it on this chain next to the purple pendant and not take it off.

That way I won't lose it.

basic black cardigan

Try to think of the most basic, versatile, boring even, item of clothing. I reckon a black cardigan would come in pretty far up on the list.

Although my wardrobe is quite 'basic', especially in comparison to most sequinned, tutu'd and feathered teenage girls, a basic black cardigan is one thing I don't have. On the occasion that nothing but black would cut it, I go for grey, or navy. Or hot pink.

I do however have one cardigan which is black, but with pointelle and made of angora and having no buttons, I would say it's anything but basic. I randomly took a photo this morning to illustrate the fact that my getting dressed method daily at 6:30 in the morning is 'pile as many clothes on as you can. Fast.'

Then I got overheated and took it off and lost it at school some time today. This got me thinking about the fact that I am not immediately concerned; for a supposed basic I rarely wear it. It probably gets pulled out about once every three months, and normally because it's so warm or the sillouette works really well with more weirdly cut clothes. But I am a bit upset as my grandma gave it to me one of the last times I saw her.

Ah well, it should turn up soon...

This is part four of mainly mundane posts to accompany daily digital photo week.

hungry

Today I have been so hungry. Not in the all too normal, I just can't stop shovelling food in my mouth way. Proper hungry.

I woke up and had two breakfasts to stave off the hunger at 7AM. Worked solid until 11AM so didn't physically have a chance to eat, at which point I prompty finished off my lunch. Completely ravenous. At 1PM, bought a nice snack bar. But oh my god I cannot describe the hunger I was feeling from 3ish to 5.15. The kind of hunger which you can physically feel, and can almost describe in words... like a bubble inflating in your stomach, kind of gnawing. Then I had a bowl of soup, then an apple, then a roast dinner. Mmm, finally, not hungry. Except at 9PM when I sat down to watch TV, I was hungry again.

So I ate, cinammon and apple ricecakes. Scrumptious.


Fascinating, eh? You will have to live through another 4 days of this I'm afraid.

yuck

So I am still doing the photo a day thing - read my explanation for that here.

I thought that I would go for a compromise today. I am not actually going to post up today's photo on this blog, because this is a blog for pretty things and today's photo certainly isn't pretty.

So click on this link for an enlarged photo of a split hair - and don't tell me I didn't warn you!

I am completely disgusted by the state of my hair, but I can't stop fidgeting with it. I think the only solution is to cut it all off, an idea I return to as my patience wears thin at regular intervals. I mentioned this to my friend on Friday. We made a bet: if he had an invite on Facebook to a party that night waiting for him when he got home, as he felt he ought to, I would have to cut all my hair off.

Luckily/unluckily/interestingly, I won the bet. Now, what do I make my side of the bet??

bits and bobs

I've had an idea which might help to make my blogging a little bit more consistant.

Every day this week, I am going to try to post. But there is no use planning one of my normal half hour plus writing sessions for a single post, because, as if I haven't said it enough already, There. Are. Not. Enough. Half hours. In. The. Day.

Instead, I am finally beginning to utilise my summer birthday present of a digital camera. Because, yet again, There Are Not Enough Hours of Light to use my DSLR. Then I can post whatever interesting picture I have taken from that day, with maybe one or two lines, which should hopefuly be insightful and wonderfully witty.

Happily, I already have a couple such photos stored on the camera. Let's start with this one:

Three, or maybe four days after, I am still in awe over the intactness of my self-manicure. I have had this dark purple by MAC for a long, long time now. At first, I hated it; it's so thin and takes about three layers to look consistent, which with my span of patience means that I could never get it right. But I haven't bought any new polishes for so long now that the rest of my collection has descended into shitness, so I thought I would try this out again. Who'd have thought that some polishes actually improve with age??? (although admittedly this is a shot of my lefthand which looks much better than my right hand).

Tomorrow: I am not sure yet, although I do have a spectactularly focused shot of the tip of one of my hairs split in 12 different places. But is that a bit gross for the internet?

Part III - formulated and foiled

Come on. You can't seriously tell me that you didn't guess what part III of my action plan to combat the red shift taking place in my wardrobe would be, could you?

Well, if you didn't, stylish readers, I am disappointed in you. It was the most natural progression possible! It was... going shopping!!!

Of course, nothing is ever as simple, especially when it involves recreating style, ensuring functionality, not emptying out the bank account and doing all this during the month of August aka The Season of Dead Fashion.

So, naturally, I began to make lists, in the corners of discarded spreadsheets and at the back of my Moleskine diary. Most of the items are along the lines of:

• Hardwearing riding-esque winter boots
• Dark drapy top
• Grey cardigan or jumper

(i.e. clothes which are impossible to find in the summer, even when said summer consists of clouds and rain)

Even though I have not actually been shopping, I have browsed through several shops. The clothes I have seen are not particularly inspiring, and I have noticed myself being distracted by other attractions, such as a huge grey patent purse (down from £225 to £60 - bargain!, right?) and these:

In the past few days, I have suddenly begun to take note of shop windows. SALE signs scream loudly; I follow their call to be met with a disappointing jumble of 'bargains' which at half price are only ridiculously expensive as opposed to hideously expensive. But there were a couple of cool displays, it has to be said.

Mostly though, I was distracted by the painfully fashionable people which seem to be everywhere, pointing and laughing and jeering at my jeans and my cotton t-shirt (OK maybe that last bit is paranoid imagining, but the first bit is definitely true; everyone else is way more stylish when you're shopping).

Still, never fear. I am now biding my time for the September rush of new season clothes, which I can justify at full-price as I know they won't go into sale for at least four, maybe five months, by which time I will have worn them to death, obviously. And in the meantime, I have put Part IV of the plan in motion...

red shift

To start with, I have no idea why I am thinking about physics right now. Thinking about a title for a post about changing style, red shift was the first thing which popped into my head. I suppose it only serves to illustrate how I, as a person, am definitely different to my former physics-abhorring self.

Today I got a haircut. As my blog records inform me, the first haircut in 13 months. Nothing drastic; there is very little I can do with my hair if I want to maintain any semblance of control over it without having to straighten, blow-dry or otherwise treat it to within an inch of its life. I am not exaggerating. The woman who cut my hair said that if I want to do anything with it apart from what I normally do, she suggests getting a Keratin treatment first (costing upwards of £200, although mine would be around £300, and according to this Google search link is potentially fatal...).

Anyway, although it was not a drastic cut, my hair now feels much healthier and overall less disgusting. This was the first step I decided to take after glancing at myself in the mirror on Thursday at work. I am now a lot happier with my feelings towards my body as a whole, thanks to some well-advised make-up/eyebrow-plucking and exercise. But as I found my eyes defocusing from my actual self for the first time, I noticed the frizzy mess that was my hair. Quickly tying it back into a prim and proper bun, securing it with twenty clips, my eyes travelled down. What was I thinking pairing that cardigan with that skirt, with that shirt??

I remembered how that morning, in a scramble to leave the house on time, I had had no time to wash or even arrange my hair. Stepping out of the door, it was colder than I thought and went for the first option which would not interfere with the line of my puffed sleeves, without a thought for how it clashed horribly with the skirt, in colour and style.

I realised that now, as I spend more time on grooming and exercising and working, everything else about my style is slowly descending into scruffiness. Yesterday, the alarm woke me up 20 minutes late and I spent the next half an hour making and eating porridge for myself instead of getting dressed. I changed into my outfit five minutes before running out the door, an outfit which I hated for the rest of the day as well as the evening I spent in it.

Not wearing the perfect outfit every day is not exactly the worst crime, I know, but I don't like it one bit. And today, I went to begin to tidy up the mess that is my wardrobe; as I seem to be entirely incapable of keeping it tidy on a regular basis, I have to go for the blitz-tidy approach every few months, as documented here. According to this post from 4 months ago, there seems to be a direct correlation between my attitude towards my clothes and the organisational state of my wardrobe. But I don't think that's the problem this time. I think that I am just moving too much into no-style-land. That doesn't mean tracksuits and wolf fleeces and Crocs; that would be bad style. No, what I am referring to is a shift towards the non-descript basic cardigan, the block colour t-shirt, the jeans. Now I know that is a look which some people can rock, but I am not one of them.

So that is two things so far which I have addressed in this post: hair and t-shirts. The first one I have already addressed, and the second I will now, as I am going to not only tidy my wardrobe but have a mini-clearout, throwing out the most offensively inoffensive tees.

But (and I fully realise how awfully over-dramatic this sounds) that is only the beginning of my attempt to reverse the effects of my style shift, or at least shift the shift in a direction which I feel happier with. Still, I doubt many of you are still reading (and those of you who are, well done!) and I haven't yet fully formulated part III of my plan.

So I am going to label this post as posting in parts, and promise you that I will be back, to write the 2nd post, and to my stylish self.

history and queens

Right now, I should really be revising the history of some very important leaders.

But.

I did all that last night, while Mary Queen of Charity Shops was on. I have loved Mary for a long time, and could watch her programmes just for her fabulous ensembles, even if her makeover plans can be somewhat dubious.

And today, I can no longer resist the temptation to leave the Kaisers and Tsars and revolutionary leaders. Queen Mary of fashion is a far more attractive prospect.

Have you ever seen Queen Mary's programmes? What do you think?

Teevee

As I would have predicted, I have been spending a lot more time that usual watching TV.

In between badly made 'documentaries' about identical triplets, more of that fabulously formulaic detective drama and morning re-runs of Will & Grace, I have actually caught some good TV.

First up yesterday was an attempt to bring together revision and relaxation when I picked up a French DVD without even looking at the synopsis. You will notice that this is a technique I have employed in the past before. With that post in mind, you can imagine my delight to discover that Gaspard Ulliel in fact has a central role in yesterday's random pick: A Very Long Engagement.

The warped and inaccurate subtitles did annoy me; a central motif of the letters MMM were explained with the false translation of 'Manech Marries Mathilde'; as if we foreign viewers were too unintelligent to realise that the middle M in some way or another comes from 'Manech loves Mathilde' (FYI, 'love' in French is 'aime' which is pronounced like the letter 'M'). Nevertheless, it was cute touches like that which made Me 'M' the Movie.

Sorry, how incredibly cheesy was that last sentence?!?

Moving swiftly onwards was a snippet of satirical news commentary show Have I Got News For You. It is not to my usual TV taste, but I do appreciate BBC for its lack of ads and so I flicked over during a break. Again, I was met with advertisements but this time of a very different kind, as a series of sexist vintage ads flashed across the screen.

With an all-male panel, this could have veered onto the side of tasteless, but Have I Got News For You is basically charming in its tastelessness, and British TV is so liberal anyway that I was able to just laugh.

A quick Google search dug up a pretty amazing flickr account filled with vintage advertisements, where I found two of the ones featured on TV (actually - they were probably sourced from the flickr site). Hopefully you'll find them amusing too, so that I can justify my excessive TV watching just a little bit more.

bloody back ache

Revision invariably means long hours spent sitting at a desk. Even with the best of chairs, that will eventually equal horribly painful back-ache.

At first, in my attempts at procrastination I surfed all the websites I have ever visited before, which includes a gazillion different fashion forums and blogs, a gazillion celeb gossip websites, a gazillion quiz/trivia games (some of these I kidded myself actually counted as revision...), watched a gazillion TV programmes on free iPlayers, played a gazillion games of solitaire and spent a gazillion hours on one social networking website.

I am only slightly exaggerating. It is the truth that in the course of my religion revision I discovered the Duggar family and spent about an hour absorbed in their 20 people family. I'm not even meant to be studying Christianity.

Anyway, I pretty soon realised that after I had procrastinated on the computer I would have to continue to work... at the computer. So I have now realised that procrastination that does not take place at the desk is much more pleasant.

I discovered 'cooking' i.e. reheating food to a barely edible standard and creating salads (harder than it sounds since we do not have a microwave).

I discovered that tidying your room is actually quite fun.

I discovered that daytime TV is shit, but you can watch it anyway.

I discovered that exercise might seem like a good idea but it's not going to happen (hopefully I can prove this discovery incorrect some time soon).

I discovered that I will start reading an 800+ page classic (Middlemarch) rather than re-reading the same set text for English again.

I discovered that I have a pretty awesome £1 coin collection, and that it's actually really hard taking a good photo of coins (wait, I already knew that... from previous 'work' sessions)

I think the step away from the computer is a step in the right direction. There are only so many photographs I can take of money.

Back to posting in parts...

It feels strange to be writing this down, but it appears that I am yet again revising for yet more exams (although this time, for the real thing).

One upside of all that I get to go back to my little sequence of posts about ways to make revision a teensy little bit less hellish. To recap, here's what we've got so far:

• Watching foreign films with fit actors
• Using pretty pens
• Observing inherited characteristics in buying family gifts
• Musing on the hideousness of Ancient Greek heroes in film adaptations.
  

OK, I'll admit that some of these are a little far-fetched. But it's better than not revising at all, or not blogging at all. So anyway, here's my latest revision tip.

• Using fun font when making notes

In this case, I have chosen Burnstown Dam for all my headings. You can't see so much here, but I've also liberally applied my time to bullet-pointing lists, underlining, italicising, boldening, highlighting, enlarging font size. It was a little unexpected just how much you can procrastinate even on a word document, if you've sworn off all other distractions. Oh, the things you can do if you set your mind to it.

Over to you

This is part II to my recent ode to my wardrobe.

Every person with style, by the very nature of it, has a different style. This marked difference is delightful for me, and I'm sure for plenty of other people like me who enjoy looking at nice outfits. Take just a few of my favourite dressers on my blogroll (a good example would be Lady Melbourne, Susie Bubble and Odi et Amo) and you will see how good style can manifest itself in such different forms. But we all knew that already; variety is the spice of life, isn't it? After all, Oscar Wilde coined it when he said that 'fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months'. Trends are boring, only style is enduring.

I mentioned yesterday how getting dressed in the morning felt much harder when my wardrobe was in a state. I couldn't find the clothes I was looking for. Rumpled and ugly, nothing appealed. I would tend to wear whichever clothes were still out, strewn across a chair. A special occasion calling for something a bit fancier would invite panic as I, quite literally, had to empty my entire wardrobe to find something and then go through the tiresome process of piling everything back in.

Now, the hanging part of my wardrobe has clothes organised in matching combinations. This is not only pleasing to the eye, but invites new outfit ideas. The rest is so much more organised and generally tidy so that I can see everything in there. Folding and stacking all my stuff, there were things which I was beginning to forget I still had.

My shoes are still in an awful disorganised mess, which means it can take forever to find the pair I had originally wanted to wear. I often simply don't have that time, which is why outfits can often be much more thrown-together than if I had a Carrie Bradshaw-esque walk-in wardrobe. I was led to wondering, if the state of my clothing storage has such an impact on my style, if something similar happens to other people.

I began to wonder if the different styles of people I admire translate to different clothes storage. Having read the blog and stylediary of two of the examples I mentioned above, I have seen that both bloggers have (in the past, I don't know about now) pretty much as different methods of storage as styles. Susie has occasionally provided a peek into her absolutely packed wardrobes, which contrasts heavily with Kokopuff's closet. So we can see that different storage methods don't impede personal style, but perhaps they do impact it.

But what about a changing state of storage? I know that the tidy current state of my wardrobe won't be lasting long. In the meantime, I'll dream about organising my accessories drawer and my shoes.

Armoir Organisation

This weekend, whilst on a self-imposed ban from Facebook and staring blankly at the walls wasting my time, I finally got round to tidying up the out-of-control mess that is my wardrobe. Other than boredom, this process was born mainly out of necessity, as getting dressed in the morning was beginning to be a little difficult and even to impede on my dress sense (but more on that tomorrow, in the slightly more text-based follow-up to this post).

However whilst tidying up, I began to marvel at the beauty of my wardrobe, the piece of furniture itself, not the clothes inside it. Of course, it's not hard to beat my previous clothes storage system, which comprised of four plastic baskets which weren't even located in my bedroom. But there's a vintage charm to my current armoir which makes any problems with not enough space, or not being able to close unimportant.

I love the unfinished white paint of the wardrobe, which was bought off eBay and had to be smashed apart, reassembled and re-painted in order to transport it.

I love the quirky little labels which are completely inappropriate to my modern day usage of the storage space. I love the hanging room it provides for clothes I want to show off.


Would it be wrong to love one's wardrobe more than they loved the clothes inside?

Next I will be thinking about the possible effects a person's clothing storage system might have on their style, or vice versa. For now, I'd love to see the wardrobes of all you gorgeous bloggers! Call it the nosy side in me, but consider yourself tagged (yes, ALL of you).

Le bonhomme

I've always loved the children's story The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and was distraught to read a while ago about the many faults in the most common Katherine Woods translation. I have since read that, although not perfect, the now less common Woods version which I read, has been replaced with a much worse and more wooden literal translation. It is difficult to know what to believe, and I wondered if I might be able to read the French original.

Then, last week, I wrote about the lovely package I received from Paris, and lo and behold, the other book was indeed Le Petit Prince. Of course, I was delighted to now be able to read this charming little book in its original language and improve my French, but what made me even happier was the beautiful packaging and cover of the edition.

Whoever said not to judge a book by its cover was wrong, at least in the literal sense - I won't deny the metaphorical truth in this saying. But many of my very favourite books are those with aesthetically pleasing covers. This may sound odd (but who cares, you already knew that I was odd!) but having an interesting, unique design seems to make books just that much more enjoyable.

Laraphile

The other day, I received a most wonderful care package from Paris, composed of two very different types of French literature I could use to practice my French with. The first one I am going to share with you is an edition of VOGUE Paris, which, as a certified Francophile and lover of Paris in particular, delighted me. When I last bought VOGUE Paris over two years ago I could not understand a word of it. I am very happy to report that this time round, I was much more able to comprehend the text, although still much of my non-French focus was, of course, on the pretty pictures.

I am not a frequent magazine reader, however one unusual thing struck me about this magazine - please do let me know if this is actually more commonplace than I thought. The cover model, Lara Stone, was not simply a cover model. In fact, I would estimate that photographs or interviews with her took up at least 50% of the magazine's pages, with most of the rest of the pages taken up by ads. Even the cover of the runway supplement could not escape her, with not one but three images of Ms Stone.

I'd always had an image in my head of the Parisienne as a perfectly unruffled, eternally chic bad girl who was less likely to be found with a girl crush on a model than wearing a pair of Crocs. It appears not. Here is a tiny percentage of the photos I took of editorial upon editorial of Lara Stone:

There were tons of beautiful sequences each one titled 'Lara something or other' with several different photos for each. This was my favourite!

Of course, Lara fronted and presented the regular (I presume they're regular) sections on beauty and make-up. It was really fun experimenting on the angle of these shots, I could either make her jaw look really huge, or her eyes really alien-esque. Mwahaha, power!!!!

There were also, scattered through the magazine, different artists' takes on the model.

Naturally, although I may have thought that they went a little overboard on this particular model, nothing annoys me more than when a magazine uses a photo of a celebrity such as Angelina Jolie, who is known to sell well, and then put a one page interview inside. As I mentioned, I only buy magazines very, very rarely because they seem to finish so quickly, but this one seems to be neverending. With the hundreds of gorgeous photos, I can spend hours gazing at them, and then several more trying to decipher the text. I suppose the French know how to do something properly!

Part II of my Paris care package to follow...

Sans Honte

I'm all for hard work, but sometimes if your work has become so entirely and completely without enjoyment that with every page turned you just want to stab yourself in the eyes à la Oedipus, then it's time to reinvent your work strategy a little. A week ago, I suggested reading cute little kids books in your chosen language as a means of revising said language.

I may have now come up with something even more revolutionary.

Actually, this is probably the least revolutionary idea of all, because I can think of at least one, or two, maybe three... actually probably four other posts which are pretty much based around the same concept - that doesn't refer to revision tips posts.

So, I was searching for a French flick to watch with my friend which we might be able to count as revision. Whilst there are certainly plenty of wonderful French movies out there, I didn't want something in black and white, something easy and gripping thus allowing more concentration to be placed on the language. I was drawn in by the racy cover and suitable amount of awards stars of the 2003 film Les Égarés (Strayed).

When we started watching, I knew I'd chosen well. Introducing: Gaspard Ulliel, acclaimed and sexy French actor.

Dites-moi, cher Gaspard, qu'est-ce que vous regardez?

What better way than to have a gorgeous male lead to keep you focused right on the screen???

Sans honte, by the way, means shameless in French.

Slumming in style

I am acutely aware of the fact that I have been a rather non-committed blogger over the past few days, and to be honest I don't have an excuse. I have not been incredibly busy, I have not been working hard, I have not been tied up with family business during the festive season...

Although I have stayed inside for about 80% of the past few days, this also doesn't mean that I've been slumming in my PJs. Oh no, any opportunity to get all dressed up for a trip to the library this morning or ... I can't even remember what I did yesterday!

So here's my revision tidbit for today. Even when just lazing around, attempting to feel like you might actually be doing some work (writing out a Physics formula sheet in this case, I think) you may find it fabulously helpful to do so in style. That includes simply getting out your purplest, fluffiest, sparkliest pen to write with!