More kids’ fashion
Today I am not only dressed as a 10-year-old girl, I’m dressed as a 10-year-old girl whom Photographer Flavie actually shares a building with. I feel this adds even more weirdness to the whole occasion, but let’s laugh it off. After dark I cry the tears of a clown.
I’m wearing leggings under the dress for the office because I’m not mentally prepared for bare-leg season and, even when I am, knees will not be involved.
Did I ever mention the time I went for a walk around the Geffrye Museum grounds wearing a just-above-the-knee sundress? (Oh, do please tell us, this story sounds absolutely riveting.)
As I entered the walled herb garden, an old lady in a wheelchair turned to look at me, pointed and screeched very loudly to the group of about six pensioners she was with, “Look at ‘er, just wandering in ‘ere with ‘er knees out! It’s absolutely disgraceful!”
Various picnickers and young families turned to see what all the fuss was about and I vowed on the spot never to show my knees in public again.
But this doesn’t count as ‘in public’, which is worrying in itself but that’s a separate subject, so here’s the snap in all its accumulated wrongness.
"Not just for adults"
Not suggested for adults
Conclusions:
- I have the hairband on and everything, but physics decrees that head and feet don’t fit in the frame
- I really do need new Converse: my socks actually touch the floor
- The caption was a problem today so if you wouldn’t mind just moving on now, that would be great
Tonight my dear friend is coming over for Lepard date cake, I’m going to attempt some home styling and dahlia planting, and I’ll be preparing my outfit tomorrow so I can look as much as possible like an 8-year-old schoolboy. Watch out Little Jimmie Krankie. Oh Christ, I just Googled that to check my spelling and my eye was caught by the sentence “If I am aroused by Little Jimmie Krankie does that mean I’m gay or straight?”
Copy the little children
Last night’s dinner was supposed to be smoked duck with pak choi but, due to a late night at work and a lack of desire to jog further than necessary to reach a big supermarket, it became chicken with cabbage. Since there was no photo to copy anyway, this struck me as no great shame and I soon managed to get to sleep without having failure nightmares.
Today, however, things have taken a distinct turn for the worse. I am concerned about my fashion karma. Is there not something very wrong about copying the style of a four-year-old? It’s widely considered misguided to wear one’s hair in pigtails to the office, so going one step further and directly aping a toddler’s outfit – complete with pinafore, kiddy hairgrip and pull-on plimsolls – must be thought of as a full-blown mistake at best. Amazingly I’ve already received several compliments on my hair today – but haven’t quite been able to bring myself to reply, “Thanks, I got the idea off a baby I saw in a magazine.”
Stripes
Cripes
I think the conclusions for today ought to be promoted to the level of disclaimers.
First, I’d like to apologise to the model’s parents, who I’m sure aren’t reading this but who I imagine might find the above photographic episode rather chilling if they were.
Second, I’d like to apologise for still not being able to get left and right right, and for therefore scrunching up the wrong hand.
Third, I’d like to apologise deeply for having my shirt outside the pinafore instead of underneath. I had it on under the dress this morning and it was billowing out everywhere in a most ridiculous fashion. I knew it was a busy day at work today and I wanted to look vaguely credible when required.
With all that sorted, it only remains for me to report that today I clawed back the ground I lost yesterday and followed The Measure to the letter by buying a pair of Asos navy tailored shorts (only £25 and I need a pair that fit). They are meant for men and yet I bought them big because I find it humiliating when menswear is too small for me. This means I run some risk of looking like Uncle Buck in them, but that could potentially be no bad thing.
Now I get to think of it, I’m not sure if Uncle Buck ever wore shorts, but I’m pretty sure he went fishing. Also, I think it would categorically be a bad thing if I looked like Uncle Buck, but I don’t like deleting thoughts after I’ve gone to the trouble of typing them. That’s why I’m going to sign off now before things get out of hand.
Au revoir x
Unbold, unsmoked, untasselled
Yesterday’s outfit was tempered for the office and then reconstructed when I got home and had access to my housemates’ wardrobes for photographic purposes. Strictly speaking this is cheating, as my rules are that I must wear my own clothes where possible, and that I must wear the outfits out and about like a brave person, not just piling them on for the photos and immediately casting them to a corner of Room 101 when the lens is put away. However on this occasion I knew my housemates to own the perfect garments for the job and there was no way I was going to tramp through a rainy day in Nin’s beloved Opening Ceremony wedges and Jess’s vintage Stephen Marks ikat jacket. Come to think of it I didn’t actually ask the girls if I could wear them for the photo either, but I know it’s OK. I really know it’s OK. If either of you is reading this, I hope it is OK.
The posing is very difficult when no one’s in, as the iPhone camera has no self-timer and using a reflection is tricky. The result is altogether buffoonish.
Tread lightly
Unsightly
I worked late last night so dinner was actually cobbled together from the vastly expensive shop next to the office and eaten at my desk, meaning Hugh’s mackerel roll had to play the part of a bedtime snack instead. A rather indulgent snack, admittedly, and not home-smoked in the least. But why smoke it at home when Sainsbury’s had done such a great job of smoking it for me? It was their Taste the Difference kiln-smoked stuff, which I’d never tried before – unbelievable, I promise. I do seem to sound like a Sainsbury’s ad sometimes, which I’m not proud of at all, I can tell you.
Hot smoked mackerel sandwich
McSmoked mackerel sandwich
And now I turn my attention to The Measure, whihc has already caused me untold heartache this week. And to think it’s only Tuesday.
For logistical purposes I tend to divide up the various tasks in The Measure and assign them to different days of the week, partly so that I have more chance of being able to achieve them, and partly to give myself an excuse for wriggling out of something if I don’t really want to do it. Saturday was a case in point. I YouTubed the band Hurts as suggested and found them to be pretty brilliant. Their song Wonderful Life is amazing and I can’t quite work out how they’d passed under my radar. The video did make me scoff a bit but black and white stuff usually does, especially if no one is smiling or moving, especially if there is a girl doing pretty dumb dance moves. They seem like funny chaps in their interviews anyway. After watching all this happily it dawned on me that The Measure hadn’t mentioned just their music, but their hair. By my rules, whatever The Measure says, I am supposed to copy. There was no escaping it – this meant going out and getting a crew cut.
Reader, I couldn’t do it. I simply didn’t have the gall. I’m not proud of my head shape at the best of times (too flat at the back, and other complaints no person other than my own self would bother to spend much time noticing), my jawline is not looking its best at the moment, what with still being less distinct than it once was after the previous run of baking adventures, and my skin, sadly, could never be described as ‘best’, ‘better’ or even ‘good’. It seems to me that these three things are the key deciders in whether a woman looks good with a crew cut.
It’s all very well bravely cutting off your hair for a blog and making it all into an interesting experiment. But what if you change your mind about the blog a few weeks later (as has been known to happen) and end up spending all summer in tears, and a wig, incapable of looking anyone in the eye, particularly members of the opposite sex, and dear God what if you are thirty now and are supposed to be becoming more confident in such situations.
So in the end I let the mental debate drag on until I could tell myself all the hairdressers would be shut and the day was over, meaning the task didn’t have to be done after all. My chest is constricting just thinking about it.
Today I am experiencing yet more heart freezing. The post office nearest my office, despite being in Primrose Hill, doesn’t stock French Vogue. However I managed to find the Measure-beloved curtain tassel-wearing Vogue interview on a website so I could see what I was aiming for. Fine, I thought, these tassels ain’t that crazy, they make kind of good accessories, I’ll go for it. So I logged on to the Guardian’s suggested source of such items, Pret a Vivre, selected the recommended tassels… and discovered that my order was going to come to £88 plus £12 for delivery. That’s £100 on tassels.
I have just spent 15 minutes grappling in genuine anguish over this matter. It might seem like a nobrainer but I promised myself this time I would give it a proper shot, keep the project entertaining, be subversive about it, play it unsafe. But I also promised myself that, as ever, I wouldn’t sacrifice my own physical health, financial stability or personal relationships in the process. It seems this is already proving an impossible combination. I looked at the tassels. I looked at the checkout total. I looked at the tassels. I looked at the checkout total. I decided I’d spend £100 on a nice bit of jewellery, at an enormous push, so why not on the tassels? I filled in my details. Then I thought of my mum reading this blog (as she often does, to keep up with my news) and I imagined her discovering I’d spent £100 on curtain tassles to put around my waist and neck, and in my mind’s eye I saw her shoulders sag under the weight of responsibility for having spawned this tortured beast and I heard her exclaim “Ohh, Jody!” with saintly exasperation. And I decided not to buy the curtain tassels.
My heartbeat has just about returned to normal.
Is this simple purchase anxiety? It might be, but there is definitely an extra level of torture added by the fact that I don’t even want the ridiculous curtain tassels anyway and I’m only even considering spending my money on such an absurd outlay because the Guardian told me so. But presumably there are legions of people out there who buy all sorts of things for exactly thast reason, although it might be Grazia or Glamour instead of The Guardian. To me it almost feels more guiltifying to buy something you like instantly. It seems too easy. Is this a wider psychological phenomenon or is it just me? I’m not sure.
Cripes almighty, I’m going to make a cup of tea.
And so, with tea drunk, here is today’s outfit, looking nothing like the picture. It is now very late and I must literally run home to cook a duck.
Floral dance
Awful stance
Conclusions:
- It’s all just a blur of tassels and heartbreak and flaked mackerel and dramatic shadowy music videos and Oh! I am all a-faint.
Lazy Marmalade
Last night I arrived home to the not unpleasant task of baking Chelsea buns. They took a bit of time but I did try to be patient, which was made easier by the fact that there was plenty of leftover noodle soup to stave off my hunger.
I thought I already had vitamin C tablets and strong white flour at home, so didn’t buy any on the way home. Sadly I was wrong, so the buns had to be made with plain flour and no fizzy fluffening agent. That might explain why the finished buns had the collective mass of a black hole. Also, I took my usual ‘relaxed’ approach to measuring and rising times, which has now become such a feature of my cooking style that I rarely challenge it (much against this week’s advice from Oliver Burkeman, which I have otherwise been attempting to bear in mind.)
Despite their heaviness, the buns were tasty and a proper treat stolen warm from the oven. Housemate Nin has taken the rest of the batch – plus more leftover noodle soup – to her studio to feed her students with today, so the reviewing of Guardian-created foodstuffs has now opened up to include even more opinions. Their verdict on last week’s bean and cinnamon stew, incidentally, was unanimously positive. I suspect they might be less kind about the noodle dish (which had turned into a linguine dish, and very unsouplike at that), since it had become insipid and claggy by the time I revisited it last night. Most dishes are best served lukewarm, not least revenge, but this one lost its appeal as fast as it lost its temperature.
On another note I have cheered up slightly since reading this bleak NYT article on weight gain/sedentary lifestyles.
I’ve cheered up because without a broken foot I am back to my militant walking, running, stair-climbing, bag-carrying, fidgeting way of life, and this article says to me: “dahhrling, of course a broken foot and the subsequent three months of enforced sitting down are going to affect your lumpenness levels. Stop blaming the Guardian quite so damningly for introducing you to the joys of daily suet puddings. Just keep moving around and enjoy your life like a normalton again, please, with less of this monotonous whingeing about dresses not fitting.” May the glory of Chelsea buns be officially reinstated! Whoo-hoo!
Marmalade Chelsea buns
Badly made Chelsea buns
Say hello
Say goodbye
Conclusions:
- I am verily not enjoying today’s outfit or its accompanying centre parting. I have put a grey blazer over the top for work, which helps a bit. It’s the kind of ensemble that just about works in front of the mirror if you ruffle up your hair, hold your head at a precise angle, suck in your tummy, adjust your blazer so it falls right, stand up tall and dim the lights. In all other conditions I suspect the positive points of the outfit fall away rapidly.
- I promise that I’ll stop talking about the pastry/dress size correlation very soon. It has become a rather significant element of the experiment, and it is turning my blog into some sort of Rosemary Conley confessional booth. This was not my intention at all. But my intention was to be honest in my documentation of living the Guardian lifestyle, so I am caught in a trap. As traps go, however, it’s not exactly life threatening, so we’ll just breeze our way out of it elegantly.
Split peas and a broken heart
Last night I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s piece on food and meat eating. I finished it with a lump in my throat, glad at least that dinner was vegetarian.
His thoughts on the significance of meals stabbed me in the clogged-up arteries.
As the months have passed during this project, the outfits and recipes have become part of my daily life, no longer anything remarkable. Most of my friends and many of my colleagues know what I’m doing and have long settled into their chosen level of amusement, bemusement or indifference, either leaving me to it or helping me pose for photos and eat pans of spaghetti for ten. The paper is bought first thing each Saturday morning, pages are turned, dresses belted, pans stirred, photos matched, captions written. The more familar my routine becomes, the less I question it and the more rarely I bother to scratch the surface of what I’m doing.
But on a personal level, it goes much deeper.
Taking food out of its context can sap much of the joy from eating it. Some of the pleasure of chopping, stirring, spooning and swallowing transcends circumstance, but for me any emotional meanings attached to the dishes I’m creating have often dissolved by the time the food reaches the plate.
Of course there have been many evenings like last Saturday, spent around the table with friends, happily slurping mangoey steak juices and talking about affairs of the heart. But for every one of those times there’s been a night like yesterday, spent alone in the kitchen in front of a daunting mound of ingredients, slicing veg mechanically and stirring in soured cream when I would’ve been quite happy with a simple, healthy salad for one.
It doesn’t matter how delicious a noodle soup is or how finely cut a cardigan – it’s the meaning we attach to it that makes the cooking and the wearing worthwhile. You can spend hours a day making your home look like an interiors shoot, copying catwalk looks and cooking River Cottage recipes, but it won’t buy you the love of a family or the glamour of a beautiful model, no matter what you read in the Saturday supplements. We all know this, so why does the belief that these things can be bought into endure so relentlessly?
This sounds more melancholy than I feel, but the matter continues to get under my skin.
Now I’m back to my running schedule I hope the rich recipes will become a treat again, rather than a dispiriting obligation. Now I’m living with friends I hope there will be lots of communal bread breaking around shared pans of food. Now I’ve got a sensible budget sorted I hope the odd new bit of clothing will feel like a wise investment and not a waste of cash.
As always, many of the problems I’ve run into doing this project have been a result of taking the whole thing to such an extreme level, and that commitment is a necessary part of the project as far as I’m concerned. But it still raises the question of what happens to the meaning of food – and clothes, and interior design and the rest – if it comes straight out of a magazine. Can you really buy into a stylist’s look or a chef’s favourite dish? You can put on the clothes and prepare the food, but what happens to the layer of meaning underneath?
Legume noodle soup
Gloom and brooding soup
Impress
Depress
Conclusions:
- Comparing oneself to a plus-size model turns out to be far more depressing than comparing oneself to a stick. No excuses.
- The noodle soup turned into a pan of pasta with sauce because I had lots of linguine to use up. But it was absolutely delicious.
- I have high hopes for a regained sense of control and a renewed appreciation for cream-based recipes now my foot is unbroken and I’m able to exercise again.
- If my hopes are dashed, I have a pact with myself to become the less snappily titled Health and Fitness Magazine Girl for a while and conduct a study on the efficacy of a different brand of manipulative claptrap designed to undermine your intuition and create false need in order to sell products. Sorry, I mean magazine.
- Today I’m supposed to buy two pairs of trainers to replace my old Converse, one of which I can’t find and one of which goes beyond my budget after having bought the ingredients for yesterday’s dinner.
Dresses to impress #1
Don’t feel like too much of a twit in my clothes today, which makes a really lovely change.
It’s just a white dress and a grey jacket, isn’t it, with the addition of some beetroot-coloured, woollen tights that were entirely my own choice. Well, I suppose they were the weather’s choice really. He (the weather, that is, who as we all know is an old man) certainly didn’t choose bare legs this week.
Dresses
Messes
Conclusion:
- Ach, not a lot to say really is there? Yotam’s soup recipe looks tasty for tonight and the week’s fashion isn’t too taxing. Quite looking forward to checking out the Measure-recommended sneakers and chucking out me old Converse. Looks like it’s shaping up to be an OK kind of a week.
Gurning bright
I didn’t wear this outfit to the catwalk show earlier in the day, but I did put it on for a bit of telly watching later.
On the run
Got the runs
Conclusion:
• At least this was one of those outfits I had very low expectations of.
Jumping, fair trade
Steak salad, fairtrade cake, jumping in a pink minidress. That was the weekend for me. Wasn’t it for all Guardian readers?
Today I took the day off work and went to the Nicole Farhi show, being sure to take a packet of Mini Creme Eggs in my pocket (see this week’s Measure). I found it a curiously pleasing experience to eat chocolate while watching those coppices of bony thighs breeze by. It was like watching The Snowman in front of an open fire.
I also popped into Jigsaw and tried on the drape-front cardigan that gets the thumbs up this week. It was lovely and soft, a good colour and a great shape. But I still couldn’t make myself spend £79 on it.
Tonight, fried pineapple and ice cream. Happy times.
Mango, avocado and steak salad
Mangled avocado and steak salad
Shorts stuff
Warthog
Banana chocolate cake
Bedraggled chocolate cake
Conclusion:
• So far, the week is good and the food is great. The fashion, notsomuch.
Date night
Weirdly could find no figs in the supermarket, so Photographer Cari (remember? yay!) is sharing date cake with me instead. And taking my photo again, like the old days. Witness the return to form. On one side of the lens, anyway.
Grey
Blee
(Caption dedicated to Smash Hits readers of the ’80s).
Fig, wine and honey cake
Fug whine and hurry cake
Conclusion:
- A pleasant cake, but was confused for bread more than once, sometimes by people who had a mouthful of it at the time.
Primary instinct
I cooked Hugh’s cinnamon bean dish last night and am now, in line with his suggestion, enjoying the leftovers out of a tupperware tub the following day. It’s very nice actually, with a bit of yoghurt stirred in, but I don’t have a comparative photo to prove this fact.
However I decided it was high time for another home styling session, particularly given that I’ve just moved into a new place. My housemates may have wondered upon coming home last night why all the furniture had been slightly rearranged so it looks a bit less nice than before, but hopefully all the homemade meals will go some way towards making up for this indiscretion.
So, here’s the first in a new series of improved Space imitations. I’m not going to write damning captions because I love my new home and feel I ought to settle in for at least a week before I start to cuss it just for the sake of a cheap pun.
Fashion update: this week’s first shoot has been very tricky. If it had just been jeans and t-shirts (when does that ever happen?) on a grubby model in front of a white wall, I might have been able to fit the odd snap around moving house, but painting my face with ice-creamed Kate Bush make-up, trying to squeeze into diaphanous dresses I probably don’t own, backcombing my hair, asking a friend to don a matching outfit and stand around next to me clutching flowers, getting someone else to photograph us… it just hasn’t been practical, as I imagine you can imagine.
BUT… today I am wearing not only blue tights in homage to the Guardian shoot but also the first pair of heels my feet have touched in three months! The left paw is officially better! I can’t describe to you my happiness as I clopped along the pavement swinging my bag this morning, just shy of six feet tall again, builders suddenly saying good morning and laying down their coats across puddles, bluebirds flittering at my shoulder… oh, the joy of heels! That is until I got to the train platform and realised my shoe had filled with blood. A few months of living in Converse and plimsolls has encouraged me to nudge towards the Mrs Twit in terms of my appearance. Overgrown. I need to cut my toenails if I’m to wear pointyish shoes with pleasure.
Conclusions:
- Cinnamon and beans make a good combo, and patience pays off when sweating onions (such a horrible phrase).
- I heart high heels so heartily.
- I tell you, it’s a new start. New(ish) job, new home, new heels, new razor, new running plan. By the start of the summer you won’t be able to tell the difference between me and the models in the Guardian. Just you wait! Then the blog will become pointless/have reached its apex, depending on your point of view, and I will move to LA to become a chef/interior designer/model/stylist/life coach/relationship expert/make-up artist. Perfectly true.
- I spent my Measure money and half my food budget in Ikea on Monday. What can I say? I needed storage more than I needed the Smythson Daphne bag. Next week, next week…
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 
leave a comment