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 day yesterday: no herring, some denim
I looked like such a fool in this outfit, and that is putting it very politely.
Walking to the usual cafe for Sunday’s fry-up with backcombed hair piled on top of my head, magenta lipgloss striping across my eyelids and silk hareem pants billowing at my knees, I felt the eyes of the world boring into me scathingly. When you next wake up with a paranoid hangover and just want to pull on your favourite jeans and a soft, comforting t-shirt, try fashioning yourself as a dramatic beast of Dalstonicity instead and walk around town attempting to look inconspicuous. On a ten minute walk I had to phone four friends for moral support and none of them answered, probably having tired long ago of comforting me on my daily jaunts in ridiculous outfits. I don’t mind looking silly or eccentric; what I object to is looking like I think I’m cool. There’s something mortifying about that. If I could only wear a sandwich board with a disclaimer on it. The All Ages story looks pretty staid this week but this big hair/pink eyeshadow combo is really tricky to tone down.
Anyway, as usual, the photo doesn’t nearly do justice to how stupid I looked. Thanks to Elin for the action photography, although we had to reject the jumping shots as they were disfiguringly blurred.
Dinner wasn’t herring because it was Liv’s actual birthday and you don’t refuse to attend your best pal’s family meal on the basis that you have to stay in and cook fish for your vanity project.
(Happy 30th Liv. You are the most brilliant person, without whom the world would be very, very much less enjoyable. )
Strike a pose
Dyke with woes
A quick update on the Measure front: I’ve seen this Kate Halfpenny stuff before and it’s very lovely indeed but when jewellery shopping involves commissioning, one-offs and/or prices on application, those of us who aren’t yet CEOs know it’s time to wait until dragonfly trinkets hit Claire’s Accessories. By which time we don’t want one. I’m not dead keen on dragonflies anyway – they’re a bit naff aren’t they. They’re for girls who have those mini-hairbrushes in their handbags. The Reiss skirt looks pretty nice but, again, budgetary considerations can’t be pushed too far aside in late-January and I spy posh rucksacks slightly further down the Measure list this week. I could really do with a rucksack to help avoid dropped shoulders on all my long walks, so I might put a bit of cash into that.
Conclusions:
- iPhones can do all sorts of amazing things but they can’t really take decent snaps of magazine pages.
- Sorry if the caption is in any way offensive today.
- What is good is how differently various styles make you behave. I found this get-up put some new dance moves into my repertoire, a loping swagger into my walk and, curiously, a series of chimp noises into my lungs.
- Liv’s family has some pretty eccentric dressers in it, which meant nobody batted an eyelid when I walked into the room looking like a Janet Jackson backing dancer on steroids. Relaxing.
- Great timing on the herring/birthday curry front. Only one more day of oily fish to get through.
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
Too many spanners in the works
The straw has broken the camel’s back yet again.
I tried on my only posh frock last night and it didn’t fit me anymore. I’m officially taking another sabbatical from this project until my broken foot heals and I can exercise again. Until then the horizon is lined with salad leaves.
I look forward to having my evenings back for a while and some spare cash to spend on xmas presents.
However, look! I discovered how to make a random post button (top right).
This means you can catch up on all the extremely hilarious posts you never bothered to read before.
X
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.
Argghh
I have to dash (if you can call it that) to Antwerp now and haven’t had time to upload all the cake/boot/omelette/interiors pics I harvested last night. Suffice it to say I’ve had remarkable success and the photographic proof will appear early next week.
A farl cry from Hugh’s recipe
I’m getting well into the warm fracture booty now but it doesn’t half take ages to get everywhere. Last night I damn near broke my neck and wasted years of my life transporting flour and potatoes to Phoebe’s house for a wee dinner party with Nin and Liv. Not that it was a waste of time to go – it was lovely. I’m just used to racing everywhere in a huff rather than taking time to admire the empty fried chicken boxes and soggening leaf mulch of London’s streets.
I cooked us all a fry-up, which was supposed to incorporate Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s potato farls but ended up starring gluey mash instead. The bonus was that mashed potato is bigged up in the Measure this week, so I was inadvertently succeeding at one of this week’s to-dos while failing at another.
I don’t know if I mixed in too little flour or what but hell, I think mash goes with pretty well anything and I was more than delighted to eat it with fried eggs, sausages, bacon, beans and toast.
I forgot to ask the girls to take my photo before I was dropped home by kind Phoebe and there was no Guardian farl snap for the day anyway, so this post is sadly unillustrated. Therefore I’m going to keep it short and sweet.
Tomorrow you can expect: booty (not that kind), omelette skyscraper, cake and possibly a home improvement feature – but let’s not set our goals too high. I have to do a mammoth cook tonight to get my tasks done before I head to Antwerp tomorrow.
Conclusions:
- Consistency is key but when it comes to fry-ups you just have to be grateful for what you’ve got.
- There’s arguably little point in walking around in an unflattering outfit all day in the name of the blog if I then forget to photograph it, but I can tell you it’s still quite pleasant being told what to wear of a morning. I missed that during my recent break and pretty much went around in little black dresses every day. It was boring.
You ain’t seen muffin yet
I undertook another another mission last night as I had to get a cab from work to A&E via Bezzer Liv’s house to collect my moral support and then have my crummy foot checked out again. An evil nurse made me feel so silly for even being there (“we’ve already told you clearly there’s nothing wrong, so why are you here again?”) that I secretly cried a little bit after she’d gone. Luckily Liv saved the day by finding the nicest lady in Homerton Hospital and asking her what we should do. Nice lady instantly got a doctor to have a quick, kind word with me, and he checked the x-ray and made me an appointment at the fracture clinic for this morning. Turns out the bone is in fact cracked and I’m now in a space-age fracture booty device for the next six weeks. That’s going to put a whole lotta spanner in the Guardian Girl works – unless they happen to base the next six weeks of fashion shoots around pseudo-ski style and/or neu-medical hip.
Such is my renewed dedication to the Guardian cause that, even though I didn’t get home from The A&E Experience (“watch your crutches on that puke on the floor. Actually, is it a turd?”) until past 11pm, I still made a batch of muffin mix, let it rise while I had my bath and then cooked them while I dried off. They were less satisfying to make than yesterday’s crumpets and I totally fonzed up the mixture by using self-raising flour instead of plain and putting too much water in so the dough resembled PVA glue. I also coated them in actual semolina rather than the suggested semolina flour, because it was what I had in the cupboard. I thought they’d be disastrous but in fact they came out looking more or less like muffins, albeit slightly fecal as ever, and they tasted pretty good but a bit bland. Actually, to be totally honest about it half of them tasted like washing up liquid. There’s a good reason for this. After crumpetgate I washed my frying pan by pouring water and washing up liquid into it and leaving it on a hot hob until it boiled away. Dunno why it did it but by the next day I’d forgotten I had. The frying pan looked lovely and clean so I started cooking the muffins without rinsing it. I suppose I might produce some extra oestrogen as a result but that’s unlikey to do me much harm. Three breasts are better than two.
I think the muffins are meant to be split and served with butter or the like (marge?) but I’m trying to be slightly calorie aware as I’m getting zero exercise with my injured paw, and we know what happens when you eat Guardian food every day. It tends to supersize a girl. I got away with it slightly more when I was walking or running 4-12 miles a day but arguably that’s what gave me the cracked foot, and one must pay attention to the body’s cries for help apparently.
I could sue the Guardian for making me chubby and further adding to my distress by suggesting I wear small fashions. Or I could thank them because the surgeon told me I have good strong bones, which I attribute to all those pies.
So the crutches made it into yesterday’s fashion and the booty is soon to become a regular sight. Dunno if I can wear it with a platform heel on the other foot. I suspect the answer to that is fairly obvious. So much for xmas party glam.
No muffin shots but here’s another underwhelming fashion shot of yours truly outside Horrorton Hospital.
Studs or sequins
Stubby deliquent
Conclusions
- I’m pretty sure my captions are going downhill.
- Every time I try to type “conclusions” I type “cobclusions”, which is not only irritating but also reminds me of my dead house rabbit Cobbie, who I really loved even though he bit the crotch of every male who went anywhere near me, no matter whether their intention was to kiss me or or hand me my change. He had a pink lead and used to go everywhere with me, which I think might be why he was so irritated all the time. I feel a bit guilty now but I did give him lovely fresh veggies every day and he lived a mollycoddled, free-range life.
- Don’t forget to clean the detergent from your pan before you heat food in it, will you.
Crumpets and Mickey Mouse ears
Yesterday was my first day back on the case and, of course, it turned into the inevitable rollercoaster that comes with taking a magazine’s lifestyle template and Pritt Sticking it directly on top of your own week in spite of its total ludicrousy given the fact that you can barely walk due to messing up yer foot, and have spent all your money on cabs around London, and cream cheese and salt beef bagels to make yourself feel better. Today’s post is going to be a string of extremely long, pompous sentences and you’re just going to have to deal with it. I’ll get back into the swing of being brief and personable soon enough.
The lowest trough last night was hobbling through Camden on a deformed bruise of a foot in the howling wind after a long day at work trying to get to Hackney in time to buy crumpet rings, have my photo taken, see my bezzer mate, phone the bailiff to tell them I don’t owe the council any money (I don’t) so can they please stop threatening to seize my valuable goods (not sure whether 20 threadbare Ikea rugs, a collection of owl portraits, a roasting tin, the Dallas Season 1 DVD boxset and a dribbling but well-meaning cat would add up to the value they say I owe anyway), have a bath, epilate my legs before I have to return to A&E and risk terrifying the doctors yet again with my hirsutism, and finally actually cook myself some food. The average busy evening is made far more stressful by having your maximum speed capped at 0.00005mph, I’ve discovered.
A higher peak arrived later though, steaming-skinned after a hot bath and standing over the stove watching bubbles rise through golden homemade crumpets. It’s a big grumble hauling myself back on to the Guardian wagon and whipping the old ‘orse back into action but it’s always been those moments when a recipe you’d never have thought of cooking yourself turns out to be beautifully simple and impressive that it really is worth the effort.
I used egg rings, whatever they are – I suppose they’re so greasy-spoon owners can make sure their fried eggs are worth £6.95, or people in really clean slippers on polished wood floors can give their kids a nice neat breakfast – but they were on sale in Sainsbury’s and did the trick perfectly for the recipe.
Globbing the batter into the rings and watching it turn into actual, professional-ish looking crumpets was very satisfying, although it got boring after a while and I cracked out the Ladyshave while I was waiting for each batch to cook. Here’s a lesson I’ve learned: plucking the toe hairs out of a swollen, purple foot is not the most pleasant way to spend time and in hindsight I don’t really know what I thought I was doing, even with these tasty teatime treats as light at the end of the tunnel:
Crumpets
Crummypets
As for yesterday’s outfit, I don’t have any Mickey Mouse ears and just putting myself in the position of my colleagues for a moment, if the new person at my work rocked up in Disney fancy dress on day six of their employment, I wouldn’t be thinking kind thoughts. If they also happened to look a bit self-conscious, crack weak jokes every two minutes and walk on crutches, I’d wonder why the hell they’d even bothered with the ears if that’s the way they approached life.
I went for a headscarf teamed with a brilliant sequined sweatshirt my friend Hamburg Emily bought me for my 30th and I felt just dandy. I think sequins in the office is fine, totally fine. Disney in the office is totally not fine, of course, and we must fight back.
Liv kindly took my photo later that evening. She got some good shots but in the end I prefer this accidentally long-exposed one because it fits with the supernatural theme of several earlier photos on this blog.
Hang Tough
Dang rough
Conclusions:
- You liderally can’t look chic on crutches, or cool, or anything other than injured.
- Imagine if you were on crutches and wearing Mickey Mouse ears. It’d just make life miserable wouldn’t it.
- Crumpets are something you can make at home cheaply, quite healthily and quite quickly, and they have the proper holes in and everything! It might just be me being a philistine but I’d never have guessed this.
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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