Guardian Girl

Crumbs, I have to learn to ride a horse.

And it looks like a very expensive week.

I sat down with a double helping of black pudding and made a list of everything I need to buy this week if i’m to be properly accurate.

For the Measure alone I need:

1.  Some ’90s Madonna
2. A conical bra
3. Riding lessons
4. Alexander Wang gear
5. Turquoise jewellery
6. To go and see the Aztec exhibition at the British Museum
7. Barrettes
8. Dishevelled hair
9. Some Katie Grand/Katie Hillier-related stuff
10. GQ Style
11. A horse with Hermes accessories (I so wish I had the means to do this one)
12. Grey Gap Crombie
13. £140 over-the-knee boots
14. A gold cuff
15. A dress with “a rush of gold sparkle”

Good job I saved a bit of cash last week.

It was nice to see the Space special feature involving some rooms that looked like something I might want to have in my flat, although taking design inspiration from famous authors might run the risk of getting ideas above my station. If you visited my flat you’d see what I mean.

I opened Hugh’s cooking pages with my usual tired sigh. More potting this week. Potted crab, potted mackerel, potted cheese. It honestly makes me feel weary just looking at these recipes. I don’t mind putting a bit of work into cooking if the result is a delicious stew or a pie or a cake or a something. I don’t know what it is about the bloody River Cottage that gets right up my nose –  it might be the word “river” or the word “cottage” or more the combination of the two – but I just don’t want to pack a load of stuff into a pot only to fork it back out again. I grew up in a cottage – I’m not exactly an urban type – but even as a shire dweller I can’t imagine I’d have been very keen on potting stuff other than mud pies. Perhaps it’s more of a generational divide than a geographical one, as my dad is quite keen on preserves and terrines and so on. Chocolate pots could be an exception in my eyes as chocolate definitely benefits from being served whimsically. But as for a nice bit of fish or a good hunk of cheese – just put it in a sandwich for pete’s sake.

Yotam annoyed me too by requiring a day’s preparation to strain yoghurt. I’m becoming quite petulant about all this great fussing around food. My heart is with Mr Lepard this week. A bit of hard work begets a bit of nice pie. Seems fairer.

Fashion – happy to see the Guardian doing quite an unGuardiany shoot (even if they did feel obliged to go satirically haywire on the spray-tan and pink lipstick), although I’m pessimistic about the degree to which I’m going to be able to recreate this. The tall, skinny-legged, blonde and bronzed elements look kind of important, as does the supply of expensive-looking nude-shaded clothing.

Denim – easy-peasy. The high street looks are pretty much always simpler and therefore easier to replicate. It’s in copying the designer stories that I tend to end up looking like a total dimwit.

Conclusions:

• I am twitching my purse strings with every page turn.
• I just want to eat a sandwich.
• I’m getting a bit bored,  over-tired and tantrummy, and I want Weekend to ring the changes more often. Life feels like one long recipe, one torturous shopping trip.The ennui, dahhhling, the tedium – how will I survive?
• On Friday night I found my friend Richard reading Hesiod (Richard is way cleverer than me). Hesiod tells his readers what to do, including when to cut their fingernails, and he does it far more lyrically than the Guardian. If I don’t have a holiday as Daily Mail girl soon, I’ll be Hesiod Girl one week instead.