Busy Friday
I’m not having much luck this week. Yesterday I had my first migraine in 18 years, which sent me straight to bed, half-blind and very confused, without watching the election results.
Today I feel improved but am extremely busy at work and have no exciting Guardian achievements to report, and no time to report them if I did.
Here’s today’s look. Let’s hope tomorrow’s mag contains enough barmy fashion to keep the entertainment levels up despite my increasing failure to conform with requirements, particularly recipe-wise.
Go to
No can do
Conclusions:
- I have friends coming for the weekend so I might actually be able to excuse a bit of cooking and having fun – gasp! Wait, what am I talking about? I just spent a long weekend canoeing, pubbing, flailing around Suffolk and generally having a disproportionate amount of fun. And now four days of knuckling down and I’m complaining! It’s the boring diet food that’s destroying my enthusiasm. But needs must. At the end of the long salad road, Dan Lepard will be waiting with a cake recipe to reward this abject torture.
The balanced life
I only just read Oliver Burkeman’s column this week and am gratified to see how much it upholds what I was feeling yesterday – that if trying to balance and perfect all the various aspects of your life wears you out too much, perhaps having an imbalanced life is preferable (I hadn’t actually reached that conclusion to be fair, I was just doing the whingeing bit). If this blog is anything to go by, I’m generally happier when my life is hopelessly out of kilter. Trying to do everything well mostly just stops you from doing anything well. I’m veering towards thinking the answer might lie in skewing your life dramatically in one direction at a time, for example becoming uber-healthy for a month or spending all your free time making your house look nice, and then choosing another task to tackle next.
Maybe I’m biased because this is how my life tends to work out whether I like it or not. And maybe in turn this is why I find all the Guardian business so hard. My way of achieving balance happens over the course of a few years, not a few days. Perhaps I ought to adjust the project and dedicate sections of time to completing self-help books with all my concentrative powers. I could become Fabulous in a Fortnight, then Make Any Man Fall for me, then Detox my Life, then Declutter my Home and so on until I have turned into Gwyneth Paltrow and lost all my remaining friends.
In the meantime, my one maxi-dress has come out to play.
Some people
M People
Conclusions:
- I’m still having a break from the recipes, purely to win a point against Charlie the fat-caller. What with all the running I do, a few weeks cutting down on the carbs will sort me out and then I can reinstate the baking with a clear conscience. But my god, the cookies I’m missing this week! They sure do look good. However we can’t be good at everything all at once (see above) and it’s true that I should really get back into my summer clothes at some point. Another chicken salad it is, then.
- Obviously the M People caption is pure irrelevance. It just sort of came out. It always makes me smile to think of M People, anyway.
- Did pretty well on the outfit today though, huh? And is anyone else a bit unsettled by the way the model looks about 20, and you can only tell she’s any older by looking at her hands? I think it might all be prosthetics, like that bit at the end of some Tom Hanks movie or Titanic where you can totally tell it’s just an actor in an old suit. Not sure if this is a cuss or a compliment to the model.
Maxi-ed out
I’m not very good at maxi dresses. I have only one. This week’s All ages is going to be tricky as a result.
The lengths
The shorts
A rather unpleasant photo today.
I am also supposed to be doing something ridiculous with my hair in the manner of someone from Glee, says The Measure. Achieving this hairstyle would mean having extensions put in my fringe, the red colour stripped out, and the whole lot bleached platinum and cut short. Just thinking about it gives me split ends and a migraine. I do however have this vaguely snarling picture of myself in a blonde wig, so that will have to suffice for today’s effort. Lame, I know.
Sue Sylvester's Vogue
Me being grumpy at a fancy dress party
I apologise. It’s the best I can do. I don’t even watch Glee, even though The Measure’s been telling me to for about six months. I tried once and it just seemed to be full of bad jokes. Maybe I need to give it another go. But when one is trying to cook like Hugh F-W, dress like Jess C-M, be as wise as Oliver Burkeman, live in a show home with a perfect garden, earn enough money to buy the necessary accoutrements and exercise enough to maintain the required dress size, where does one honestly find time to watch television?
Back to dinners, I had to work late last night before going off to a gig and then running home, leaving no time for cooking. I bought me some crisps and some chicken drumsticks, and downed a few pints of cider at the pub. That was as close to papas arrugadas with grilled meats and aperitifs as I was going to get. What I did get was loads of grief off my mate Charlie for being fat. I think I might actually have to go on a proper diet and lay off the baking for a while. AGAIN. Jeez.
Conclusions:
- It’s always the same – I come back to a Guardian Girl stint with a vengeance and by the second week I’ve totally lost enthusiasm. How do I always forget how hard it is to make life work in this way? Stoopid damn cooking.
Canoes, ponchos, pub dinners
This bank holiday I canoed along the River Stour with a bunch of lovely people, several angry swans and no pairs of tailored shorts.
At the precise moment I was supposed to be in River Island (according to the Measure) I was instead on a river, poking affectionate fun at an extremely small island (it was my insecurity that made me do it). A far better use of time, we can all agree – especially when you see the pair of shoes I would otherwise have been buying. For £85. Why?
I’d decided canoes and cameras probably weren’t happy bedfellows so no photos exist of my rivergoing unfashionableness. Even for someone who publishes large amounts of awful photos of themselves on a daily basis, this is a great relief.
On arriving back to London I got back to my rightful duties and cooked up an enormous bowl of potato salad à la Fearnley-Whittingstall for me and my mate Charlie. I used more potatoes and more bacon than the recipe called for and yet we still polished off the entire thing, plus a family sized bottle of chocolate milk each. It was a bit sick but very enjoyable really. Coincidentally we also watched Easy Rider, which is (very nearly) the name of the fashion shoot this week, so in some roundabout way I feel I’ve achieved a degree of success. You may think otherwise. Here’s the evidence.
New potato salad
Huge potato salad
Today I woke up early and attempted the shorts/mac/belt ensemble dictated to me by my papery friend. Unfortunately, despite all the miles I’ve clocked up running around London and paddling around Suffolk, there’s no escaping the fact that I enjoy a pint of Stowford Press and a good yorkie more than the next lass. The shorts I was wearing last summer do fit me again, but that’s where the relationship ends. After staring at today’s fashion for a further ten minutes with my mouth open, I realised I was about to be late for work again, put a frock on and ran for the door.
Easy riders
Easy on the ciders
Conclusions:
- Canoeing is the don of exercise, and River Stour Boating are the dons of canoeing. A weekend to be recommended.
- I’d rather have the cider than the shorts anyway, so that’s OK.
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?”
No time for chickpeas
It’s sad but I had to work late again tonight and there was no way I could wait until after the long run home, a trip to the shop, a shower and a good half hour of cooking time to eat my dinner. A desk-based supper was the only way to go today. As you can see, however, my dedication is significant enough that I stuck to the correct foodstuffs.
Alphonso mango and curried chickpea salad
Dried mango and a hurried chickpea salad
So there we have it. No 10pm dinners for me if I can help it. One needs the brain fuel.
Conclusions (unrelated to post):
- Since when have Love Hearts said ‘I surrender’ on them? How much innocent childhood are kids these days allowed to enjoy before we introduce them to the complex fetters of sexual dynamics?
- Last week I saw the most alarming facial hair I have ever witnessed. An aging man was waiting on the other side of the pedestrian crossing from me. He was awkwardly tall, slightly bent in stance and of an ashen hue, leering menacingly into the road in his high-waisted trousers with what appeared to be a long, white fang protuding from his mouth. As I walked past I saw that it was in fact a thin strip of grey moustache that he had grown to such a length that it hung down over his bottom lip. The rest of his face was clean shaven.
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.
Guardian Girl IV: Revenge of the Return
As predicted by the previous post announcing my latest break from the project, I am back. I’ve decided never to say never again with this lark – I will probably be stopping and starting well beyond the day Weekend magazine becomes an augmented reality, Daily Prophet-style feast involving Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall walking out of the pages to offer you a taste of his home-cured gammon fillet and Tim Dowling plopping slow, sardonic tears into the palm of your hand as he recalls the latest argument he had with his wife.
This time it wasn’t the Guardian life I missed so much as the communication and catharsis of writing a blog every day. And maybe the pastry just a wee bit, especially now I’m back to running my four miles a day, so eating whole cakes all the time no longer feels like entirely the wrong thing to do.
I will carry on until I begin to lose my mind again, then I will stop and be free for a while, then I will get bored and start again. That’s OK, isn’t it.
As seems to be the trend for some reason, my first weekend back was celebrated with a pretty ridiculous outfit. Saturday’s had me looking like Wurzel Gummidge (not for the first time as I recall) but that didn’t matter much because I barely left the house that day.
Heavy petal
Never mind, petal
Sunday, however, was a different matter. For the first time ever I attach a headshot just so you can get some small idea of what was going on beyond the required pose.
In the absence of a feather headdress I tied a headscarf around my head, Slash-style, which is practically uniform around East London these days, so no blushes there. I have recently cut my fringe with the kitchen scissors again and dyed my hair bright red, which perhaps laid the foundations upon which this look’s utter madness was built. I hung a pair of enormous gold earrings from my ears and a gigantic gold plastic chain from my neck to get the jewellery as close as possible and added a shirt, black peggish trousers and heels. It was an eccentric outfit for a walk in the park, which is what I did that afternoon, but not entirely out of this world. I think what made it look really weird was the make-up. In the picture the model has a sort of yellow, burnished eye/cheek shadowy thing going on, which I recreated by smearing gold eyeshadow in big patches on the tops of my cheeks. It was quite an orange gold and the overall effect made me look like I had a strange case of localised jaundice or a very bad fake tan. I certainly didn’t look quite right. Many people stared, several sniggered. At one point an entire table of people sitting in a cafe I walked past turned around and began to laugh loudly. I’d think I was just being paranoid if my companion Charlie hadn’t kept up a running commentary of the reactions going on around me.
Nevertheless by the end of the day I’d walked my friend’s dog, sat and had a coffee in the park, stocked up on dahlias (as recommended by the gardening page), bought a few records, gone to Sainsbury’s for steak salad ingredients and whiled away a few hours in the pub, all with no ill effects beyond a few sneery glances and some rather unkind laughter. It makes you think: why not dress up in silly clothes more often? It is pretty fun after all, certainly allowing you to use more flamboyant hand gestures. Next time you see someone dolled up like a bit of a twit, it might be worth cutting them some slack. Especially if you are John Power of the band Cast, who drinks in my local pub and didn’t seem very happy about the headscarf.
As for my friends, Charlie didn’t mind the ensemble when I first appeared at the door but became irritated by it after about ten minutes. Later, in the pub, he pulled the headscarf off and said something along the lines of “Now I can relax”, which I took as an opportunity to remove the painfully heavy earrings and stupid gold necklace so that I could also breathe again. We bumped into Genius Jesse in the street, who said I looked great. Housemate Jess concurred and the folks I was in the pub with later decided it wasn’t that mad and even looked kind of stylish. Cliche of the day: everyone’s different.
Pow wower
Power wower
Hugh’s steak and potato salad was wonderful, although not smoked. I scanned the column, saw something about a smoke alarm and some sawdust, and decided that unsmoked would be just fine.
Home-smoked ribeye steak salad
Unsmoked ribeye steak salad
Conclusions:
- I feel my relationship with the Guardian has now taken on the status of the on-off love affair that has you crying, laughing and drawing all around you into the magnificent drama of the thing. For about a week. Pretty soon the novelty wears off, it becomes accepted that whenever you’re apart you will remember what you really love about one another, after five minutes together you’ll remember why you really split up, and all your friends will have banned you from mentioning his/her name. I will just quietly get on with this fate I have signed myself up for.
- People aren’t that tolerant of eccentric dressing if it looks a bit trendy, and yet eccentric dressing is entirely harmless, and far less daunting than it seems.
- There are some pretty amazing-looking dahlias.
A spot of R&R for spring
Dear folks,
Apologies for my recent silence. This time I haven’t broken my foot, run out of money, fallen ill or flown off on holiday.
I simply needed a break. Every now and then I reach not exactly breaking point, but at least cracks-appearing point. I get tired of living on autopilot, with Weekend magazine at the wheel. Where my heart once soared at the thought of trying a new recipe for dinner, my stomach drops as I realise the evenings ahead will be spent not socialising with friends, but making the daily trek to the supermarket for ingredients and spending the following few hours following chefly instructions.
If I reach a stage at which I feel cheesed off and impatient, I tend to truck on and record the process with as much humour as I can muster. But if I get to the point at which life ceases to be fun and the days roll out ahead of me in endless sheaths of uniform black-and-white magazine pages, I know it’s time to stop – at least for a while – and cut loose for a bit. I have all sorts of ideas bubbling away between the ears; which magazine to follow next, what experiment to try, but for now I am having some much-needed R&R time.
This weekend I went to Birmingham to see wonderful old friends and have delicious meals cooked for me – meals that weren’t invented by Hugh, Yotam or Dan. I wore a dress when I felt like it and a pair of jeans when I wanted to be comfy. I didn’t have to plan anything, and it felt fabulous.
My exercise is back on track and my diet is deliciously indulgent when it wants to be, and healthily austere when I just fancy a green salad. Everything is balanced nicely. As soon as I’ve recharged my batteries I’ll no doubt be back on some unlikely tangent, quite possibly involving the Daily Mail. Please bear with me while I enjoy the springing of spring and the feeling of liberty in the air. But do check back soon, as, like a captive with Stockholm syndrome, I can never stay away too long.
X
PS In the meantime, as always, the random post button at the top-right of the page might provide some stand-in entertainment (or some humourless drivel, depending on how lucky you get).
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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