Eight years later
Oh hai! I’m now peddling my neuroses on Instagram. Come and marvel at the fact that, eight years later, I still can’t pose in a dress without looking like a 1980s secretly cross-dressing Tory MP daydreaming about latex bodysuits at PMQs.
Out of office
Dear reader,
I ate all the sumac, I bought all the designer pochettes, I pranced through all the public parks on ‘photoshoots’. Now I need a rest. If you’re new to this blog please see the sidebar on the right to understand why in God’s name I did it, for years of my life that I’ll never get back. If you’re old to this blog and want to relive the halcyon days, here are some of my favourite moments. For adrenaline junkies, there’s the Random post button. Enjoy!
What’s that behind the curtains and do you think it has been sipping methylated spirits??
Posts a bit sparse last week as I spent part of it in Prague with no evening dresses, part of it in bed with a cold and no costume jewellery, and not much of it in front of the mirror with a lipstick and a curling iron. This is a shame, as the usual All Ages photoshoots are very boring whereas this week’s fashion invited all manner of fun with ornate ceiling roses.
In any case I have made up for my absence with this unusually racy yet as-usually deranged bit of posing.
Perfect party mix
Dirty farting minx
The caption is making me gag and cringe. Why am I here? Who am I? What is happening?
Merry almost-xmas to one and all.
A new dignacle*
* Pinnacle of dignity
Satin
Pratting
We were looking for a wood-panelled wall when my friend Charlotte suggested that the floor would make a good match. By golly was she right.
Everything on a white background
Cocktail
Cockhead
Trousers
Pants
Work
Shirk
Today saw the return of my long-term nemesis.
Funnily (but not that funnily) enough I’m wearing the same trousers I was wearing last time I had to copy her pose.
Maniacal stair
Your eyes are playing tricks on you
Your eyes are being removed for your own benefit
At the bottom of the stairs was one of my workmates, shouting “what the f*ck are you doing?”
Pleather/stew
Grandeur
Grand mal
The iPhone auto-enhance did something terrifying to my eye, which I’ve left in for good cheer.
Fish and chorizo stew
Fish and chorizo spew
The stew was delicious, although the photo’s colour balance is protecting you from that fact.
If you don’t know what a grand mal is, Google it while you’re Googling Geoduck.
The pleather sofa comes with the flat, so quit your judgin.
Geometrics #2 and #3
Prints
Grinch
Illusions
Delusions
I borrowed these glasses from my friend Stef. They suit him. Here’s hoping my eyesight holds out a little longer.
Remarkable serendipity
Geometric
Geoduck
I left home for my friend’s birthday party on Saturday night wearing a jungle-print two piece, a leopard-print bodysuit and silver stilettos. I had also added a very large parka and a prayer – a prayer that the gods would make it cold at the party so I wouldn’t have to take that parka off all night.
To my enormous astonishment, upon walking into the party I found myself surrounded by a jumbling great crush of sparkling headdresses, gold beaded leggings and wild jewellery. What on earth had I missed when I didn’t read the invitation properly (apart from the directions, which unfortunately meant I was many hours late after spending much of the evening walking round and round a nearby roundabout)? I had missed the dress code, which turned out to be “Totally tropical/getting lost in Pat Butcher’s wardrobe in the dark.” I was perfectly attired after all!
A remarkable act of serendipity and a warm welcome back to my favourite dressing-up game.
PS If you don’t know what a geoduck is, Google and enjoy.
Bumper xmas issue
Show some zest
Show some pity
DISCLAIMER: This post is really long, with not that many jokes. But it has a lot of pictures.
ADDENDUM TO DISCLAIMER: Just put some hysterical jokes in, reckon it’s well worth a read now.
“OMG, where do I even begin right now?”
I had a week off work and, rather then hiring a cosy cottage in the Cotswolds or jetting off in search of winter sun, I stayed at home and stuck masking tape on my tracksuit bottoms. To add to the excitement, they’re not even my tracksuit bottoms. Then I cooked enormous quantities of food I’m trying to avoid eating in anticipation of xmas corpulence and watched my boyfriend wolf it down (ELEVEN okra fritters in one sitting! If it’s allowed to mention your boyfriend and use exclamation marks in the same sentence without breaking the rules of decency!) Then I bought an All Saints dress I didn’t really want! The exclamation marks are a mask for the pain.
Raise your game
Lower your standards
The fashion was actually fairly suitable staycation attire, as luck would have it.
Lounge hour
Visiting hour
Unfortunately I have been stung by using the magazine as my photo reference again. I was staying away from computers, what with being on holiday from the usual daily obligations. Of course now I come to snatch the online photos off the Guardian website and I find they’ve used all these different poses again. How can I make this mistake so often? Oh well, let’s truck on nonetheless.
Get
Your
Coat
(Goat? Goitre? Wayne Hussey?)
I’m having problems getting the originals of these photos to load, for some reason. I know you’re desperate to see, so here’s the first and the second.
Good colour matching, I like to think? It’s just a shame I look so… disheartened isn’t quite the word. Bereaved?
The next issue ruddered me back into familiar and much-dreaded territory. I so hate copying the photos of the actual journalists. When I recreate the models’ poses, it’s possible to set aside vanity in the interests of taking one for the team. I feel I’m representing The People in our centuries-long battle against The Models. Yeh what’s delusional about that? Yeh? Come on then!
With the real people it’s difficult because you think ‘Ahaa, a real person! This one’s going to be easy!’ And then it isn’t, and then you’re sobbing in the wastelands outside your city in a white dress covered in dirt, in the rain, with violins. Actually you’re by a gravestone. Your face is covered in teras. TERAS! A futuristic version of tears! You will never even look as good as a normal person.
Actually even worse than the comparison thing is the fear that one of the below people might see the blog and be all creeped out. It’s like if a girl at school walked past you and a photo of YOU dropped out of her bag, and then another photo dropped out and it was that girl dressed up as you in that photo! Stalker! Weird! It’s EXACTLY like that!
Anyway we know why we’re here.
Jess Cartner-Morley
Write in with a caption - I can't be fucked
Imogen Fox
Ridden with pox (this one was quite good wasn't it)
And now some spaces
to take us on to a new subject matter
maybe a subhead
Onwards foodwards
Spiced parsnip gougeres
Spiced swede poogeres
These were nice. No parsnips so, with the flick of an expert wrist, I substituted swede!
I actually managed to eat one, then walk out of the room. In fact I did this with all the week’s dishes: had a very small portion, then froze the rest for xmas. It may quite seriously be the first time I’ve ever exercised self-restraint. Feels incredible. All powerful. Scientological.
Orange and pistachio stollen bars
Orange and pistachio stolid bar
Wrongly photographed, right recipe. Based on the postage stamp-sized portion I ate, I’d say this was pretty great stuff.
Foot-long herb 'heros', with sausages and chilli cranberry sauce
Inch-long herb 'victims', with sausages and chilli cranberry sauce
These victims are going to be our Christmas Day breakfast.
That’s like something a proper blogger says isn’t it? I’m feeling so lifestyle!
Onion seed breadsticks, with shots of smoked salmon cheese
Onion seed pugil sticks, with clots of smoked salmon cheese
Very tasty and easy breadsticks here. Recommend trying them. Think Monica might have something to say about my presentation though. Oh my, a revelation – Monica is what’s missing from this blog! I must contact her asap for some feedback.
Membrillo and stilton quiche
Jam and stilton quiche
What’s this? Oh yes, the quiche. Now this was really nice. Also been stuck in the freezer to be resumed on Boxing Day. Even Whole Foods didn’t seem to have membrillo, so I used fig jam, apparently to no detriment. It’s just like a sort of ploughman’s in a tart, no? That was an unsavoury turn of phrase, in hindsight, and I shouldn’t have used it. Let’s pray for computers to be invented so I can delete it.
Spicy okra fritters
Greasy, acrid shitters
Finally, the fritters. I found them seepingly cloggetory of the arteries but my flatfellow very much enjoyed them, as we have heard, so they must have some merit in the universe. Or rather in Hades by now I expect.
more pauses here
And for afters
A reel of painfully aspirational photos of my flat. Efforts at interior styling have, as usual, fallen and fractured their coccyx.
Dining booth
Feeding trough
Living room
Existing room
Kitchen
Addiction (to gin, by the looks of things)
Exterior
Posterior
Conclusions:
- The grand conclusion of the day is that I have now fried most of my money in oil, bagged it up and frozen it
- If you see what I mean
- So now I have to stop again, enjoy Christmas, wear what I want to the office party, and return at some point in the new year
- This is just a prediction; I may write again tomorrow
- If you’re thinking of doing some cooking for the days in and around xmas, I really do recommend the quiche and the breadsticks. And the stollen bars
- Happy Xmas/See you tomorrow! To be deleted when we know what happens!
- Suspense!
- Been reading too many American writings and it’s stained my blog with exclamation marks and a ridiculous tone and loads of caps and italics, so prob best have a detox anyways
- Oh god bye
- Byeeeee
I've always found it funny when people write letters to the Guardian's Weekend magazine complaining that the recipe ingredients are too middle class and the fashion only looks good on thin people. After all, it's just a magazine. Or is it? I decided to follow its recipes, fashion and lifestyle advice as closely as possible, to see if the aspirations promoted therein can really be achieved by the average reader who is not especially wealthy, not necessarily model thin and is obliged to work regular office hours. This blog has no affiliation whatsoever with the Guardian but I link to the Weekend magazine website for the purposes of illustration. 
Guardian Girl 
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