Non-sequintur
Midas touch
Frodo's touch
Conclusions:
- Don’t have a sequined blazer.
- But do have a black wall. You win some, you lose some.
Sunday: a nice cake, a grotesque photo
Sunday involved making a large apple and prune cake. As I spooned a worryingly scant amount of cake mixture into a greased tin I thought I was about to create the first genuine culinary disaster of the project. It looked like a thin layer of gruel with a load of apple slices and prunes dumped indelicately on top. But 40 minutes later I opened the oven door to the most delicious smell of warm, cosy baking and a golden cake looking like a princess’s pillow (what on earth am I writing?). It tasted delicious. Even my actual genius friend Jesse who can’t have lactose ate a few slices and reassured me that she could understand why I’d scarfed down most of the damn thing before she even arrived.
Apple (and prune) pudding cake
Grapple (and swoon) for pudding cake
Dumbass caption alert.
Jesse also accompanied me trough the rat-infested alley on to my elegant street to have my photo taken against a wired-up window.
This is pretty much the worst photo I’ve ever seen of myself, and that’s really saying something given that I’m famous for producing rank portraits. My friends and I often used to go on the Crazy Mouse ride on Brighton pier, just to blow the cobwebs away and kill some time being spontaneous near the seafront, which is what you do when you live in Brighton. This one time we had particularly great fun and got off the ride whooping and high-fiving before running over to the booth to have a look at the automatic photo they take of you. There was Liv, laughing away next to Elin, who was clinging on for dear life with a big smile on her face. And then, next to them, was what can only be described as a large, brown monster that appeared to be covered in thick fur and had its mouth open in a hideous, deformed roar. That monster was me. I honestly didn’t even look like a human. I just can’t explain it. To this day the three of us rue the fact that we didn’t buy that photo on a weekly basis, but it was £7 and when you’re young you imagine this sort of opportunity will arise every day.
Turns out we weren’t far wrong: if anyone wants to buy a print of the below photo of an inflated grub, send a postal order for £7 to PO Box 101, blah blah blah.
Go, figurehead
Go, quickly, you are scaring my young family
Conclusions:
- In life, there are good times and there are bad times.
- I think this post perfectly illustrates that point.
Brave nude world #1
My heart sank when I opened the fashion pages this week. Not only was I destined to spend Saturday mooching around the shops in a floor-length golden ballgown, but I was also to spend the next three days writhing against walls in public places while pulling facial expressions suggestive of a Viagra overdose. It’s not my favourite way to spend time.
I managed to make a surprisingly good effort at the first outfit though, mostly thanks to a lovely Farhi by Nicole Farhi silk blouse that has the requisite big shoulders. I dug out a gold lace dress that I wore for my sixth form ball 13 years ago (from underneath my “Sunkist cans 1979-2004” collection), added a nasty glittery belt I bought aged 22 while conducting an experiment involving copying the lifestyle makeovers in Zest magazine to see what would happen to me (bad clothes, naff hair, loads of pilates classes) and hey presto! There was the gold outfit I needed. I spent the rest of the day laughing at terrible second-hand t-shirts (and their price tags) on brick lane and discovering that gold lace dresses are impractical garments for wearing on the back of scooters in winter.
Later on, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s bollito misto recipe for 10 provided ample sustenance for two friends and I before we headed to a Victorian-themed party at which I looked not very Victorian.
No photos of the tasty meat feast but horrendous evidence of outfit below.
Oscar beckons
Oscar flicks the Vs
Conclusions:
• Tiring of gold, beige and sequins even before having to wear the outfits this week.
• But dead excited about Hugh F-W’s apres-ski food: proper carb fests every night and a good reason to invite lots of pals around.
• Also something i’ve been pondering after spending my days in pokemon t-shirts and ugly gold get-ups: this experiment is ironically becoming an exercise in setting vanity, fashion and style to one side. I put on the closest thing I own to that day’s look and I head out of the door. I’m fast learning there’s no point in worrying what i look like as I have no choice, so I get on with other things instead. It’s very good for a person, I think. A bit like school uniform – allows you to concentrate.
• Rejected Clarks clogs on the basis that I don’t like them enough to spend £50 on them and must try to retain some financial and ethical responsibility while playing this game.
• Labour and Wait was shut by the time I got there so no posh apron for me. Phew. More cash saved, less cotton wasted. Although perhaps an apron would make a lot of sense given that I find myself cooking in silk blouses on an almost daily basis. Hmm.
This week’s wrap-up
Today’s outfit isn’t way off the mark, and Flavie and I even ventured out of the toilet into the office reception area for the shoot. The result is that the photo looks less like army night footage this time, although given the theme of the fashion it might have been appropriate to keep things grainy.
Look sharp
Be blunt
I did get my ponytail on the wrong side and tilt my head in the opposite direction from the model’s, but I have to honour tradition.
On the subject of this week’s Measure, the less said the better. What with a best mate’s 30th, the end of the January pay period, lunch breaks filled with blog writing and outfit capturing, and evenings spent over the stove, I somehow didn’t find the time to put my name on the Anya Hindmarch for Barbour waiting list (much as I would love to), or spend hundreds of pounds on a designer bag. I’ve been rubbish. I now have a bit of cash in the bank, a shopping trip planned and several hours earmarked for a home restyle over the weekend, so I hope to make restitution for my indolence forthwith. Or, in other words, get up off my rump and try harder.
As regards This Column Will Change Your Life, I couldn’t let the week end without making reference to the fact that it might have been aimed directly at me this issue. Why don’t they teach you how to make simple decisions in primary school? If only they did, Britain wouldn’t keep producing chowderheaded buffoons who can’t decide what to have for dinner without the direction of a Saturday newspaper supplement.
I put Oliver Burkeman’s three models for decision making into practice this week and found them extremely useful in every situation, especially choosing which song to listen to next. These rules will stay with me, and might actually change my life for the better. Get this man writing the national curriculum (caps?).
Conclusion:
- First week over and I’m a scone-filled, noodle-loving, quiff-sporting picture of happiness. Not partaking in the Measure shopping list, or putting any pressure on myself to do so, has been good but a bit cheaty given the nature of the experiment.
- But one serious complaint: my clothes still smell of kippers.
Post-scone midriff
Often the garments required to copy Guardian fashion shoots are fairly ubiquitous: white shirt, black jeans, blue dress etc. Every now and then, however, you get an awkward one. Today’s red jacket is one such garment.
Since I have no red jackets, it was never going to be easy to copy the key part of the outfit. Hang on a minute, why didn’t I wear my brown one? Oh well – I forgot I had it.
Since my grey jeans now have an imprudently positioned tear in the denim, and since I’m not allowed to wear heels, and since I don’t have a tanned washboard stomach, and since I don’t have a bob, and since I’m not a model, today’s outfit is boundlessly inaccurate.
These new toilet shots make me look like a middle-aged version of a Bratz doll, with an enormous head and tiny little peg feet stuck at the bottom. That’s because the toilet area is quite small and Photographe Flavie (no typo, for she is French) has to climb on to the loo to get all of me in.
In fact my feet often do look tiny, even though I have size-seven feet, and that is because I am not exactly spindle-shanked , to put it euphemistically, and also because I wear a lot of minuscule little plimsolls. I wear them because they are cheap and available in many good colours. But they are cold, unflattering, overly ubiquitous and in fact the colours aren’t that good. But this blog is not about the pros and cons of my plimsoll collection. Or about the variant spellings of plimsoll, which might be a better, although less ample, subject for a blog.
Can you tell I don’t have much to say today?
Eyes front
Avert eyes
Conclusions:
- Rubbish outfit. Have untied knot for work purposes and put my jacket on properly. You don’t need to ask why. Today is payday and we’re going out for after-work cocktails. I have to go in a stained Pokémon t-shirt. Gutted.
- If whoever left the stained Pokémon t-shirt at my flat four years ago wants it back, just say the word.
- Bit of effort needed with the photo cropping.
- Also could do with learning some synonyms for ‘ubiquitous’.
Military chic deficit continues
The elated monkey noises once filling my happy lungs have been replaced with a long, sorrowful sigh.
I am so lumpen today in my wrap dress and trainers (heels still banned due to broken foot fiasco). The dim light of the photograph below represents the death of last weekend’s bright glow. Can it be true that I miss my backcombed quiff, red eyeshadow and contemporary dancer-wannabe get-up? Yes, it can be true. Natural make-up and a centre parting continue to translate into teenage boy when I try them. Unflattering dress and flat plimsolls compound sense of gloominess.
Oh well, at least tomorrow I get to tie up my sweatshirt and reveal my bristling, wan abdomen to everyone on the 9.33 to Kentish Town West, so that’s something to feel excited about.
What really is exciting is that I’m baking ginger scones for dinner tonight. Come on, positivity!
Chic
Sheesh
Conclusions:
One more day of backcombing and fish
Top of tonight’s shopping list is a giant bottle of conditioner. My hair has remained in a matted beehive for three days now, slightly morphing in shape dependent on the position I slept in (Cliffhanger last night, for those of you who bought the magazine this week – I stayed over with a friend and the Heimlich would not be appropriate).
Today’s outfit has mostly been provided by Harriet and involves a long denim dress gaffer taped up underneath to make it thigh-length.
The beehive has been bobby-pinned within the bounds of Monday morning social acceptance and the Mary-Quant-visits-a-burns-unit make-up was rejected entirely this morning. I pretended to myself that the reason was my being in a rush to catch the train to work, but the truth was I’m too scared to come into the office looking that odd. Maybe if I’d been here a year I might be more adventurous, or if everyone knew what I was really up to, but at the moment I’m trying to retain a sense of reliability when defending my deletion of a semi-colon. I don’t want my colleagues staring at my eyes trying to work out whether I’m having an allergic reaction or am just an Adam and the Ants fan. It’s not fair on other people.
Jump to it
Frump to it
Fried herring
Fried salmon
Conclusions:
- Even in a creative office, there are limits to how ‘interesting’ you can look – work is work. This fashion shoot was quite funny to try out at the weekend but it’s definitely one for the leisure time.
- No fresh herring in the supermarket, so I allowed myself some nice but boring salmon instead and boiled a couple of kippers to try for good measure. I always imagined I wouldn’t like a flat, Simpson-yellow oily sea creature that smelt of concentrated fish, but in fact I thought it was delicious. That’s butter for you. Unfortunately I returned Harriet’s borrowed clothes to her reeking of kipper – bad manners.
The big match #1
Ahoy there me hearties!
Although my foot has not yet returned to its former high-functioning glory and Homerton Hospital has viciously banned me from running or wearing high heels until mid-February, I am out of the boot, and able to walk and carry my own shopping. Life has returned to normality… or had.
I now find myself sitting on my best friend’s bed wearing a skintight double-denim ensemble with a backcombed La Roux quiff and pink lipstick smeared over my eyelids.
Guardian Girl is back.
I hate rollmops (I know this without ever having to eat them) and it was Liv’s 30th today so pickling herring was, as ever, far from my mind. I bought an orange, a tub of ready-rolled mops straight out of hell, some bread, some soured cream and some cider. It’s not very River Cottage but then what really is, other than the River Cottage?
Conclusions:
• I have managed to get my consumerist mitts on an iPhone at long last, but I’m still getting the hang of it. Expect general confusion for a fair while, plus late additions of captions, weblinks and italics.
• People really seemed to like the La Roux effect in the end. I’m surprised and a bit pleased.
• There’s never an excuse for herring.
Lean on me
But not too hard, as this pose is slightly precarious and my core stability is not what it once was
Cider vinegar and orange rollmops
Far too much cider (not pictured), an orange and some rollmops
Hitchcock is it
Dearest Olivia took me to Tesco’s to get the food shopping in last night and, upon setting eyes on the four-page list of ingredients I was supposed to buy, helped me reach the executive decision to give cookery a miss this week.
It’s the end of the pay period, I’m not exactly rolling in it and I’d rather buy electricity and phone credit than vine fruits and pudding basins. I apologise to my mum and dad for this because it means I probably won’t be turning up to either of their houses over Christmas bearing seasonal homebakery as I’d hoped.
Today my friend and now colleague Flavie accompanied me on a mini-reconnaissance through Primrose Hill to find a good taxi-hailing street where I could loiter, lumpen in my orthopedic footwear, and pretend to be glamorous despite it being pitifully clear that will be impossible for the next six weeks.
The outfit went down the pan because I couldn’t even bring myself to try on my pencil skirt with flats, let alone wear it to a new job, and then the accessorising fell by the wayside too.
Skirt suit
Law suit
We had to run away quickly because people started throwing coins at me. One of them implored me to please not spend the money on a good meal.
Conclusions:
- In the absence of recipe cookery I was able to buy a trolley-full of exciting fruit, veg, yoghurt and other healthy items I hardly ever get to eat. It’s the equivalent of how a normal person feels buying a load of cakes and pizzas.
- A few things ruining my chances of looking like a Hitchcock heroine this week: flat shoes, special boot, crutches, neon socks on crutches, too-low waistlines on clothes (cinching and flats have a difficult marriage), eighties tailoring, heavy fringe, lighting.
Eggs, flour, crutches
A report on the end of last week, shortish on words and longish on pictures.
First, a miraculously tasty and mechanically successful two-course dinner that also provided Liv and I with a Eurostar picnic on Friday: Yotam’s delicious and not that tricky Crespéou omelette mountain followed by Dan Lepard’s bananarama tropicana cake, which was alive-tasting (not in a cannibalistic way), like a lardy version of a piña colada only less saccharine. Mine was a little uncooked in the middle and overcooked – perhaps even burnt – on the top, which I think means I need to get more involved with foil.
Crespeou
Crasspeou
Tropicana banana cake
Botty-rama banana cake (I despair of this caption as much as anyone, yet can't stop finding the word 'botty' funny)
Next: finally a fashion photo that reveals my new, cutting-edge space boot:
A walk on the wild side
A limp on the mild side
As I traversed Antwerp in this get-up, Liv consistently got the hysterics about how small my other foot looked compared to the hopalong foot. It made me know how the dog feels when the humans laugh at its ear, which has turned itself inside out.
And finally: the results of a tired, late-night interiors styling session. Check out my cosy open fireplace in particular.
Glass extension
Arse extension
Black interior
Slack, inferior
Raising eyebrows
Erasing eyebrows
Now a few boring sentences I feel obliged to write for the sake of structural consistency. I wouldn’t bother to read them if I were you.
This week’s first impressions are affected by two significant factors.
1) I was in Antwerp having a wonderful time all weekend so I didn’t buy the paper – Adam is saving me a copy and I checked it out online on Monday instead.
2) I have very little cash this week so I suspect that shipping actual tons of dried fruit and brandy into my flat to bake stuffy Christmas foods that nobody much likes anyway will be low on my agenda, as will buying £250 bottles of men’s fragrance. I’d like to try to make at least one xmas treat as it’s nice to turn up bearing foodie gifts for one’s family and take some of the culinary strain off the hosts, but we’ll have to see how practical it turns out to be this week. I wonder how many Guardian readers pulled their fingers out on Sunday and actually baked xmas cakes.
I notice that the Measure sends mulled wine and minced pies up the list this week so perhaps I’ll be more likely to get in some shopmade delights and eat them instead. Liv is taking me and my busted foot shopping at Tesco’s in her little blue van tonight so I’ll ask her hallowed advice on the matter.
The fashion spread on Hitchcock heroines is one of my favourite looks and I’d usually be in my element, but I imagine the spaceboot will undermine most of the glamour of a pencil skirt.
Conclusions:
- I love Yotam, I do.
- Cakes are just as good as they were last time I tried them.
- Fashion is hard enough to achieve with an average paycheck and an average girth, but just you try adding a leg brace and crutches to the equation.
- While we’re here, it’s amazing how many people stare at you when you’re in this condition, and even more amazing how many burst into laughter directly afterwards. You get used to it pretty quick. I have of course swiped at a few select people with my crutches in response, which is something I learned in an assertiveness workshop.
- Interiors schminteriors. ‘Tis is the season of just trying to keep warm.
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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