Guardian Girl

Well, I’ve spent a week at my new place of work and it all seems very great. Unfortunately I haven’t yet mustered the courage to ask my new colleagues to accompany me to the park and photograph me perched on a branch, which is top of my list of tasks this week since I’ve decided to return to Guardian Girl proper.

Let’s be honest about it – this blog became pretty sub-standard when I tried to get reborn as Independent Woman. It just ain’t me. And, as actual-genius Jesse said at at the weekend, The Independent isn’t the same – it doesn’t have a visible halo of sub-culture surrounding it. It just tells you the news, really. Even the recipe pages lack the secret whispers that if you only baked a potato cake on Wednesday you’d be part of This Crowd. The fashion doesn’t lure you in by repeating themes week in, week out until you find yourself wearing your hair in plaits or tucking your scarf into your belt because it suddenly feels like the obvious thing to do. All in all The Independent doesn’t boil down in the same way to a sort of politically conscious Grazia. I still haven’t managed to work out exactly how the Guardian manages it, but it does, and I’m back riding the bandwagon for the foreseeable future.

The other blogly misfortune of my present life situation, besides being the shy new kid on the work block, is that I’ve busted my foot proper. It’s been sore for a while but on Friday night I turned it over on a curb and spent the night causing mischief in A&E. My foot now looks like a hairy plum (sadly I can’t put my lycanthropic toes down to the injury – I have only my lax personal grooming to blame) and hurts a lot. I was given crutches, which made this week’s shopping quite a task, since they leave no hand space for baskets. Luckily my friend Tom was willing to help me out, so I managed to buy my crumpet and farl ingredients despite the gammy foot, but by the time we’d done the shopping and had a few pints of beer and a burger to celebrate, it was too late to rise crumpets. I’ll do my best to cook them tonight, although I must pop by Liv’s on my hobble home and ask her to take my day’s outfit photo. Every time I have a necessary holiday from this godforsaken experiment, I forget what a logistical nightmare it is.

On Saturday I took my crutches to the pub via the newsagent and had a look at what was on the cards for my first week back again, in the company of the as-ever-bemused-by-the-whole-concept Disco Dave. He just looked at me as if I was a complete idiot while I flicked through the fashion pages (“I know a few Mickey Mouses, you could cut their ears off and stick them to yer ‘ead”).

I tried to be patient looking at those ears (you’ll see the photos on here soon if you didn’t buy the paper) but I have to say I felt some degree of exasperation. I instantly knew I’d be substituting a headscarf – or an alice band at the very most.

The recipes look kind of nice in a let’s-pretend-our-bedsit-is-a-cobhouse kind of way. My favourite fantasy, that is. I really like the look of the massive omelette extravaganza Yotam’s done this week, although buying the 15 eggs made my arteries demand I have a friend over that evening, and Dan Lepard excels himself once more by writing a nice cake recipe and then telling you to pour rum/melted chocolate/butter/evaporated milk/liquid calorie over the top of it for good measure. All right, I will.

The life, the universe and everything pages seem to make sense and I think I’m going to practice being angry and enjoying it all week. So watch out. Even the home pages look kind of nice and simple-ish.

Yeh, never mind the crutches, I’m going to do the best I can this week and we’ll see what happens. Photos to follow as soon as I can transport myself labouredly to some familiar photographers (oh Cari how I miss you!), crumpet-ring retailers and Jude-Law-trainer-replica shops.

I’m back, there’s just not much evidence of it yet. Wish me luck.