Kneel, tenant
Sometimes it seems this blog is really just a bucket into which I urinate directionless puns.
Today’s outfit had to be tweaked for practicality once again as it was raining and I’d just applied the anti-Pippa Middleton leg make-up of yesterweek, which I don’t believe is waterproof. Not a day for shorts.
After a week-long break from recipe copying, I’m looking forward to getting back on the hungry horse next week. Cooking, yehhhhhhhhhhh. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Precious metal
Vicious knid
Conclusions:
- This was the last day of photo-colouring glory
- Do you need a tissue?
- No, not in that way
- If you remember the vicious knids with as much fondness as I do, would you like to be pen pals?
- No comments on facial expression/limb size today. Getting too boring.
Skillver foil
Wore a dreadful pseudo-secretarial blouse/pencil skirt combo to work, got home, grimaced and sighed a lot, boyfriend took pity, looked at intended outfit, suggested kitchen foil, bought some, wrapped me up, took a photo. Beats the Phil and Ronnie Spector story any day.
Flash
Brash
Conclusions:
- Today I actually gave advice on how to add images to a WordPress blog
- May this act as a giant disclaimer
- Why can’t I do a sexy face? IT’S A CONGENITAL DEFECT (designed to stop me spawning similars)
Coming up shorts on dignity
Give your wardrobe an edge
Give your wardrobe a dredge
This week I thought I’d try a new angle and channel the time and money I normally spend on following The Measure properly (hang on, do I normally spend time and money following The Measure properly?) into buying some of the clothes that are actually in the fashion shoots. This makes the comparison more direct. Also crueller for me but, as many of us may have twigged, avoiding humiliation isn’t on this lifetime’s to-do list.
These H&M shorts were only £14.99 and I managed to grab the last pair, which weren’t in my size. Using the considered judgement life skill, I bought them anyway – and they fit! So here we all are, peering at the photo and wondering if that actually counts as fitting.
They wouldn’t have been designed by, say, the Buttock Celebrating Society of Great Britain, but for H&M they’re not bad. As you can see, they look slightly different on me from how they appear on the model. Her legs are, after all, about the same length as my Prider when I saw the results of my ‘photoshopping’ (not TM) on this photo last night. ALMOST INFINITE. If you don’t have a Prider, you should either grow one yourself or quit raising your eyebrows at mine.
Don’t know what that’s about but I’ll leave it in.
All the new-found hours and cash that have been freed up by not having to buy men’s fair isle jumpers this week have also allowed me to do a bit of beauty experimentation, inspired by Sali Hughes’s column, which I’ve hitherto ignored on the blog but always very much enjoyed reading. She’s good, isn’t she? I think she must have finer body hair than mine, though, FYI. I got a tube of that Veet and it has left me feeling not like a silk scarf. I’ve sometimes tried to shave a Burberry check or some lightning bolts into my leg hair, but after trying several times I had to concede it doesn’t work how it does in my head. Thick stripes is about the best you can get, and it doesn’t really click with a pair of Robert Crumb legs, one of which is 1cm longer than the other (measured it with my Shamer).
Conclusions:
- More of a confession actually: I didn’t wear the shorts to work. Maybe with opaque tights in winter. I’m not hating on my thighs or anything, it’s just they’re a bit extra-curricular, you know?
- Did you get that Shamer thing? It made the Prider thing make sense in a way. LOLZ!
The torpedoes that broke the glutton’s back
Cheddar torpedoes
Cheddar corrr-pedoes
Scalloped edge
- Over the edge
Golden nuggets
Borange muggins
- Doing this thing, there are weeks of great elation during which I genuinely feel I’ve attained a higher level of capable existence, pottering around with sage plants in my manicured hands and wearing accessories. But when it falls down, usually because life can’t always be organised around gold lamé and plum tarts, I feel the lack. Lord knows I feel the lack.
- Better lighten up a bit.
- Isn’t it incredible what you can do with an iPhone app these days? Just check out those colour-filling skills on display above. You’d think it’d been done by a professional artworker.
Pass the baguette, pass up the leather culottes
Baked tomatoes with baguette
Tomatoes baked with success
Denim is back
...but I don't think this is what they had in mind
Nice dinner last night. My lifelong most-hated foodstuff (not bread) came out a treat, much to my surprise. Friends can corroborate tastiness of this dish.
Today’s working day involved visiting a construction site. The dress code stipulated no shorts, which sadly meant I had to leave my leather culottes at home today. 500 builders breathe a collective sigh of relief. Another day, another set of mottled, hirsute English thighs ungazed upon from behind the safety goggles.
Last week’s Marks n Sparks swimming cossie arrived at work today. Looks pretty good, although have lingering doubts about mid-leg cut. Hidden bra support good news for wearing it as a body-con style top though. Time will tell all.
Not done much treating self to Measure-endorsed consumables so far this issue, but the week is yet youngish.
Work busy, mustache.
Cerebellend
The title of this post is a joke about a part of the brain called the cerebellum. It’s also a joke about what happens to your brain when you are having, or have had, a proper weekend.
Please find below some specific examples of things that can happen:
- You can decide that going to a music festival is better fun than staying at home straining milk and yoghurt to make artisan cheese that will probably taste of rotten yak skin.
- You can decide that going to a music festival dressed in a rough approximation of what you might want to wear is more fun than going to a music festival dressed like a rough approximation of someone you’d avoid on the first day of university in case you ended up being friends with them out of obligation.
- You can find, the day after the festival, that you’ve woken up at the exact same time you were supposed to be at the office because either your alarm failed to go off at all or you failed to be woken by it, despite there being at least one reliable witness of the alarm having been set.
- You can arrive at work in the outfit that was quickest to put on rather than the one most closely resembling a Guardian model.
- You can temporarily forget most words other than ‘thingy’, making bullet points seem more appealing than full sentences.
- You can discover, on the plus side, that THIS IS THE MAN.
- Anyway, here are some pretty lame outfit shots. Brain probably back tomorrow – see you then.
- x
Your wardrobe
Bored nematode
Join
Avoid
The denim brigade
The 'would you like to come to my really crazy burrito party I'm having with my flatmates on Saturday it should be really fun my friend Karen will be there I think you'll get on like a house on fire she's a bit crazy like you she can drink so much tequila !!!!!' brigade
“High summer” my hind quarters
It's high summer
It's a Big Issue seller
This guy is even more painful to compare thineself to than the female models.
I internet-shopped the M&S swimming cossie out of the Measure today, having decided it would actually be quite worth owning, although perhaps not exactly the nicest thing ever. I’m usually more of a bikini kind of lass but if the Guardian’s going to keep doing swimwear shoots, I may as well stock up. I am also a member of a gym with a swimming pool, although I’ve never been in it, probably because I’ve never been to the gym. Does anyone want my membership by the way?
Everything I was supposed to do lately apart from sitting on a street and buying a cossie, I haven’t done. I have successfully completed zero recipes this week, although I’m planning to try VV Brown’s Marmite scones as part of a spread tonight. Slacked off Tinie Tempah’s seafood linguine (?!), which I was supposed to cook for my lovely ex-housemate last night because I got put off by the torrential rain and ended up curled in a beanbag reading Getting to Yes courtesy of Oliver Burkeman’s recommendation. I’m hoping it might actually transform my life – or at least help me get into fewer pub brawls of a weekend.
Cola cake purveyors haven’t got back to me about how many millions of pounds I might have to spend on getting a delivery, thereby saving a trip to Soho to purchase a single cupcake.
Other things I’ve allowed myself to ignore: J Brand jodhpurs (expensive), Voyage Voyage (refuse to take music recommendations from the Measure, regardless of quality. Some things you do not let the Guardian dictate, and music taste is one of them.)
Conclusions:
- What rascal has run off with my Fine Young Cannibals CD?
- Sorry Nin. Self-help books and rain should not be impediments to human interaction. I miss dining wit’ ya.
Are you there God? It’s me, Guardian Girl
GOD: Hello? I don’t remember giving my blessing for any human child to be called ‘Guardian Girl’.
ME: I’m not actually called Guardian Girl, I’m called Jody. I have only referred to myself as Guardian Girl about three times, exclusively on this blog and always while clenching my buttocks. I can’t even remember why I called the blog Guardian Girl. It’s a bit embarrassing when I think about it, but I guess it’s quite catchy and a bit late to change it.
GOD: OK, so why were you writing to me anyway?
ME: It’s because I’m struggling again this week. Not in any ideological sense really – just because I’ve been busy. I went to a wedding on Saturday —
GOD: Oh good, I’m glad to hear that.
ME: It was wonderful. It wasn’t really your type of wedding though, God – they didn’t mention you at all.
GOD: No, that’s OK, I’m still glad they got married.
ME: Great. And so I was away all weekend, driving around Norfolk, eating loads of amazing foodstuffs and that. I couldn’t really start hijacking the hotel kitchen or turning up to a wedding in chinos, and I couldn’t really dye my hair grey or be booking myself breakfast at the Paris Ritz or anything either. And when I got back to London I didn’t want to rush straight home and start cooking Johnny Borrell’s salmon recipes and so on. I wanted to drink cider and eat pizza and watch the Apprentice (yay Tom!) like all the other humans. And this week I’m dead busy at work, and last night I still couldn’t cook Johnny bloody Borrell’s bloody salmon recipe because I’d lost the magazine in the pub and the stupid recipe is some interactive thing using Flash and I can’t get it on my iPhone so I just didn’t do any cooking at all, and —
GOD: OK, look, here’s what I suggest. You don’t need to say anymore about this, IMHO. Just upload the photos from last week and the one you did last night, and leave it at that.
ME:
Orange
Borange
Information: ‘Borange’ is a new word for someone who is both boring and orange. Many people who are the latter are also the former; a considerably smaller proportion of the former fall automatically into the latter. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
Be a bright spark
Borange
You didn’t used to think it was a catchy new word, but now you see it applies to almost every situation. You’ll be saying it soon enough, trust me.
Sunny gym
Borange
I did write a different caption followed by a joke about jade eggs here but I deleted it because it make me feel uncomfortable (the joke, not the jade egg).
Conclusions:
- Tonight I will be home late, but I will slightly try to try Bozzer’s salmon
Textural failures
Take the step
Take the hint
Apricot mousse and apricot tuiles
Apricot slop and apricot stodge
I got the colours, I got the taste. I ain’t got the textures.
What can I say? I forgive myself.
There are 40 minutes left of today and I’m going to spend about several of them trying to buy Luxtural moisturiser online, as recommended by the Measure (and Paula Abdul by all accounts).
Conclusions:
- I could’ve waited until the mousse set properly, but if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have been able to spend the waiting time eating mousse. Catch 22.
- I also could’ve made the biscuits all dainty and tuile-like rather than cumbersome and oily, but the baking sheet still hadn’t been washed up after last week’s scones so I had to use a muffin tin. And who wants dainty biscuits anyway, apart from maybe Kate Middleton or the person who does Kate Middleton’s hair or the person who grooms the person who does Kate Middleton’s hair’s dog or some such person?
Last week’s outfits
I went on a little holiday last week, which made it impossible to do any cooking. I did, however, stay true to the cause via what I wore.
Here’s the evidence:
Danger
Minger
This one actually could’ve been far worse, and the outfit was perfect for attracting the attention of many species during a trip to the zoo. The make-up, which you can’t really see clearly in the picture, was another matter. I looked like I was trying to pick up business – not the natural choice when spending the day among French school groups and pygmy monkeys. The pygmy monkeys, by the way, were the most perfect thing I’ve seen in a long time. They are everything you could want from a being. That’s pretty high praise.
High voltage
Low IQ
If you go down to the beach today
You're in for no surprise at all, just a woman in a bland outfit. Although I guess the stain on the skirt is kind of mildly interesting. Christ.
We actually did go down to the beach on this day, but I changed into jeans. It was pouring with rain, and I know from excruciating experience that a white skirt is not the right thing to wear in the rain. Note the Clarks Tibetan Art sandals, which I was instructed to buy by last week’s Measure. Very nice actually, and comfy. A good result.
Be sure to look cool
Be sure to look a fool
Again, I had to put jeans on for this one. We had graduated to quite a posh hotel by the last day of our trip and I saw no real need to go down to breakfast in my bikini.
A quick note on the poses – I forgot this week that the Guardian online people like to use different shots of the models for the web version of the All Ages shoots (does that make any sense to you?) The result is that my poses end up being wrong because I am still doggedly copying the ones in the magazine, the pages of which photograph very badly, hence my preference for pasting the online pictures here. This might be the most boring paragraph of the blog so far but I really feel the need to point that out lest anyone should think I’m so stupid that I can;t tell the difference between standing with my hands in front of me or behind my back. Although to be fair… etc etc etc, blah.
To return to the reality of this week, after several days of back-to-back fry-ups and a not exactly frugal approach to accommodation, I bought Saturday’s Guardian with some sense of trepidation, and rightly so: this week I am due to fork out for a perm, bake various chocolate/cream/pie recipes and flash either my bum or thighs or both or something even more embarrassing in the daily photo.
Forgive me Father, for I have slightly been pretending not to be doing the blog ever since I saw this latest issue. I conveniently forgot to mention the perm while at the hairdresser on Saturday, then somehow didn’t quite get around to cooking the chocolate pie, and ‘couldn’t’ track down the Eastpak rucksack. I have yet to attempt to force my boyfriend into a cocktail trousers and rhinestone get-up, and am experiencing a certain amount of hesitation in asking my employer if I might paint a sunlight trompe l’oeil effect on the office ceiling.
I am clenching my fists at this point and willing myself to continue bravely in the face of my doubts.
Oliver Burkeman’s column might help me.
Perhaps I will be able to face the cherry and chocolate tart/swimwear shoot combo tonight…
Mmmpppphhhh.
It will all be OK.
Conclusions:
- My capacity to switch overnight from thinking this project is the most hilariously fun, horizon-expanding, life-improving idea I have ever come up with to thinking it is in fact the most ridiculously irritating, horizon-shrinking, ruinous idea I have ever come up with is astonishing.
- This project is surely the most ridiculously irritating, horizon-shrinking, ruinous idea I have ever come up with. And that includes the time I tried to replicate seven days in the life of Bruce Forsyth while I was a student. All those back massages nearly bankrupted me.
- Feel the ‘ugh’ and do it anyway.
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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