Pork products, prancing in pink (me, not them [the pork products])
What a week it’s going to be in Guardian world. I must say my heart sank a little when I saw the fashion shoots this issue. I could list the reasons but if you take a look for yourself, that shouldn’t be necessary.
Poolside thoughts
Suicidal thoughts
“Who’s that in your garden?”
“Oh, don’t worry, that’s just my Aunt Jody. She dances around out there sometimes – thinks she’s at a Fleetwood Mac concert. As long as you keep her away from the rat poison, it’s OK. Mum and Dad say it’s best if we just let her do it.”
Dinner was a more dignified affair. Earlier on I swallowed my pride and went to my first London farmers’ market to buy sage plants. Sometimes you look at yourself from the outside and you just think “what a c*nt”. Sorry. Walking around the farmers’ market with a bag of sage plants, a copy of the Guardian under my arm and a self-satisfied spring in my step, I had one of those moments. It felt pretty good in a way though, like “yehhhhh I’m one of those c*nts, yehhhhhhhhhh.” Total immersion into Guardiandom, right down to putting the thought-apostrophe in the correct place while contemplating the farmers’ market.
Anyway, if I was trying to avoid becoming a Guardian-reading cliche, this blog would be the wrong path to follow.
Green beans with sage and pancetta
Frozen beans with sage and bacon
Having nearly being consumed with excessive wellbeing earlier, I nevertheless managed to find room for a bit of the Kerry Katona in tonight’s dinner. Phew. Gotta keep it real.
Conclusions:
- It’s going to be a week of tragically unattractive photography
- Pancetta and a farmers’ market would’ve been too much for one day
World of Interiors
This summer
That bummer
I did actually get the pose down better than that, but the dang Guardian went and used a different photo online from the one in the mag itself. I feel obliged to use this one for image quality reasons. Don’t say anything but I could tell my boyfriend discovered a new level of intense lust for me when he saw my feet today.
And now, from homo style to home style. Yep, it’s time for my first interiors photo shoot in more than a year. All the furniture had to be rearranged in order to recreate the look of a Parisian former merry-go-round workshop. (I’m doing something Gromit-like with my eyebrows just typing it, let alone trying to do it.)
Vintage
Skintage
Charm
Barn
French
Merde
Merry-go-round workshop
Rehabilitation workshop
Paris
Pratts Bottom
Quirky
Dirty
Apartment
Afartment
Mixes
Mix-ups
Finds
Losses
Industrial
Imbecile
Surfaces
Social services
Conclusions:
- There’s so much to say at the end of my first week back
- It’s Friday night and I can’t be bothered to say any of it
Scale swapping
Thanks to my recent investment in a set of kitchen scales and a similarly novel inclination to actually do things properly, I have just baked my first properly successful Dan Lepard cake. I write this post accompanied by the gentle trill of my stomach happily digesting at least four slices of the thing – or is that the sound of a gall bladder’s swan song?
Glorious!
Almond layer cake with crushed raspberries
Almond layer cake with due diligence
Thighs, prawns and blue jeans
What a combination.
I’ll begin with yesterday’s outfit. I didn’t go to work in a swimming cossie – just didn’t fancy it yesterday – so I wore an orange and cream dress instead and then changed into the proper, risque version when I got home. The closest I could get to this look was an unruly get-up involving tying an orange vest over the top of a white one. It looked completely ridiculous – not so much an outfit as a portable pile of dirty laundry. To add insult to injury I tied the vest over the wrong shoulder anyway; there’s something about my brain that just cannot compute which way round things should go in photos vs real life vs mirrors. My friend Adam came over for dinner and responded very patiently when I opened the door in this outfit. I think the words ‘That’s interesting, poodle’ might have been used.
Take a dip
Take a dipstick
Whereas the model looks like a glamorous nymph emerging from the foliage ready to plunge into an icy bathing pool, I look like a bedraggled, unidentified lunatic who’s appeared out of the undergrowth without warning, only able to speak two words of Russian (“земснаряд” and “поймать”) and play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 15 in D major on the harpsichord. That’s why I’m not a model I guess. Well, that’s probably simplifying things a bit.
Today I received the glorious gift of being allowed to put some clothes on, in a return to a familiar old chore: trying to look like a bearded man. I don’t have mint green jeans so today’s clothes are pretty dull. There’s no pleasing some people I guess.
Guys
Gal
Even with thorough art direction and a decent camera courtesy of my workmates Miguel and Amar, I can’t get the pose right. ‘Tilt your left hand. NO, your LEFT hand. Your…oh, forget it, that’s fine.”
Things are progressing nicely on the food front, though. The other evening’s courgette and lovage pasta contained no lovage but a great many courgettes and niceness. Last night the preparation skills moved up a gear as I made Yotam’s green tea noodles with grilled prawns for Adam. I was nervous about the sea vegetables, never having understood why you’d want to make food taste like algae, seagulls, barnacled old rope and rusty flagpoles, but actually this was pretty nice. Should’ve dried the noodles on a tea towel like Yotam suggested, but these details always seem so pointless until you realise the point (in this case to stop the noodles feeling slimy and entrail-like in the mouth. Mmph.)
Green tea noodles with grilled prawns
Slimy noodles with grilled prawns
Christ, this iPhone photography is really letting my presentation skills down. This dish took quite some time to compose, yet the picture just looks like a load of vague cat anuses piled up in a swamp.
Before dusk today I must buy those Clarks sandals out of the Measure. They look OK and are probably good quality/value. My other sandals are breaking one by one. All seems to add up to a reasonable conclusion for once. Talking of which…
Conclusions:
- One must always dry one’s noodles on a clean tea towel. The difficult part of this is having a clean tea towel – mine seem to get bamba clad within a week, never again to return to that Shane Ritchie-worthy whiteness we (allegedly) all strive for in our lives.
- No other significant learnings for the day
Back after all this time
I have barely thought about Guardian Girl for the past year or so. Recently, though, I keep bumping into people I haven’t seen for a while who ask me if I’m still doing it and why I stopped. I always tell them it cost too much money, freedom and vascular health, any one of which would be a good reason to stop a blog. Yet despite repeatedly going over the reasons why this is such a stupid idea, just thinking about the subject planted evil seeds of temptation in my mind.
On Saturday I finally got to thinking that it really has been too long since I’ve had a legitimate outlet for my third-rate puns and crushingly unflattering photos. I used to think that reading blogs was only for idiots, so I had no idea of the benchmarks when I first started doing all this business. Since I’ve been away I have read quite a few, which has allowed me to realise that blogs are rubbish, bloggers are morons and I don’t actually have to worry about being a good writer, saying anything clever or having any sense of dignity at all. This realisation has spurred me back into action.
So, here we are.
Happily for posterity’s sake, we begin again with pies and swimwear! As you will shortly see, not that much has changed in the past year.
(We actually began with soup, but my photo of it has got stuck on a different camera, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that making soup out of salad ingredients is actually nice, even if you still can’t be bothered to chop vegetables small and therefore end up with an actual salad floating in some hot water.)
Glade tidings
Forbade hiding
A bad start on the formatting. A bad start full stop, maybe. I did put a skirt on before I left the house. Don’t really know what the caption means – is meant to capture a general feeling, I think.
So that’s swimwear covered for the day; now on to the lard.
I should mention at this point that in the time I’ve been away I have managed to shack up with a man whose appetite for a good pie matches – and possibly even exceeds – the indiscriminating gusto with which I cook them. This is a great relief because although eating two portions of pie for dinner isn’t ideal for a person, eating four is very much worse.
Mackerel and lovage tarts
Mackerel: a lovely start
It hurts to be so positive, but this really did come out good. A great recipe Hugh, ta mate. I used cheat’s roll-out puff pastry obviously, and ready cooked and smoked mackerel. Most of my potatoes had turned green and sprouted like so many limited-edition Shrek Mr Potato Heads (? quip too forced? and also why use ‘so many’ like an american when you from england?) so I chucked those out and just used the remaining couple that were just squidgy, not deadly. Are you supposed to save green potatoes to polish your silver and clean your windows with? I need to ask that woman with the big weird plait who turned out to have buried her stillborn child in a park. Anyway I am digressing into offensive territory here. The pie was delicious, all agreed.
Second outfit of the week and it has been a sweltering day. Needless to say, the blanket only stayed on briefly while Miguel (photographer of the day) took this distracted iPhone shot in which I can’t even keep my eyes open. That’s being wrapped in blankets for you. The rest of the day I resorted to the most pink and blanketlike dress I own, which is just a pink dress.
The wrap
The Mummy
Measurewise, I have got on the case in astoundingly conscientious fashion and purchased myself some leg make-up, so as never to stray into the sheer-infested territory of Pippa M’s fashion mishaps, and a collected works of Jane Austen so I can understand what this whole Anna Wintour parallel gag is about. Totally with her on the smileys though.
I have neglected to purchase any Stella McCartney eveningwear (guess why), drink a G&T with cucumber (taking it easy on the booze at the mo) and am not yet sure what I’m going to do about this issue of the Orrefors crystal tumbler or HBC modelling for Marc Jacobs.
Will update.
Off to cook courgette and not-lovage pasta now. Has anyone managed to track down any lovage this week?
Conclusions:
- Too hot for blankets, too public for bikini bottoms
- Hooray for pie sharing
- Salad soup, who knew?
- Sorry about blurry and malformatted photos etc. One day I will neaten all this up.
Rupert Grint
When my friend Adam announced years ago that he had a crush on Ron Weasley, I felt fairly disgusted with him. These days I’m coming round to the idea.
Rupert Grint
Pupa's grimace
Fashion magic
Fascist magnet
Conclusions:
- I’m always a fan of dressing mannishly in blazers, jeans and shirts, except when it’s 30º and completely airless in the office.
- It’s 30º and completely airless in the office.
- Rupert Grint has sneakily become guapo, and what’s more he apparently owns a micro pig.
- Tracey Emin’s jaw.
A beiger shade of beige
I’ve re-entered the arena expecting fashion to have moved on since I was last crouching suspiciously about the office getting papped. But nothing seems to have changed – it’s still all beige and nude around here. There was a team of two behind this photo: Ciara on the other side of the lens and Gabrielle doing set design. I don’t think anyone expected us to achieve something of this scale and emotional power.
The stage is set
The full ticket price is refunded
Conclusions:
- We’re back in play!
- If I look unrelaxed, that’s because the box wasn’t weight bearing
Notice of resumed, but reduced, service
You know it’s been nearly a year since I began this project. My latest adjournment (of many) has lasted a while and it’s done me the world of good.
Waving goodbye to Dan Lepard has meant saying hello to my old clothes again and I feel returned to balanced human form, rather than the grossly consumptive, Little Otik-ish marionette of capitalism I had become. My tendency to use melodramatic language might not have changed, but I have.
I have, much to my surprise and pleasure, been doing some growing up. Life in the shared house is happy and serene as I enjoy a lack of pressure to rearrange the furniture once a week. My bank balance is far healthier and this weekend I was able to treat myself to some new clothes in preparation for Sonar without feeling guilty – because they were what I actually liked and needed, not what the Guardian liked and thought I needed. My running regime and healthy diet have left me feeling energetic, much fitter and quite right in my body. It’s not about being skinny, I might add – it’s about being how you’re meant to be – neither starved into this season’s frock nor still bloated by last year’s pie recipes. I knew I needed to take myself in hand rather, and I have.
The increasingly heaving bandwagon of other good folks embarking on this style of blog project has contributed to my shrinking back slightly, probably for some distasteful reason related to delusions of inventiveness. But most of all, as has always been clear to everyone else, my original plan to follow everything in the Weekend magazine was just far too ambitious – financially, temporally and psychologically. You can’t sign over all responsibility for your daily life to a magazine, no matter how tempting that may be for all sorts of quite dark but no doubt common reasons. I’m 30 years old and, while it’s fun to experiment and push one’s boundaries, it’s also an important time to exercise some free will and enjoy becoming a proper woman. It’s impossible to do that when you have to consult Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall each time you feel a bit hungry.
So all things considered, it’s definitely time to accept that the Guardian Girl project as it was once conceived, is over.
Yet I have missed, as always, the ritual of trussing myself up in harem pant combos, taking photos with friends in office toilets, updating the blog with mindless anecdotes and tittering over captions. That’s why I’ve decided to carry on with a reduced service, copying the fashion stories and leaving it at that for a while. I’ve shed many tears of self-pity over shelling out for clothes the Measure recommends and preparing the pricey fare of the recipe pages, but I’ve never really minded getting dressed up in something a bit odd and prancing through the park in it, indulgently gauging people’s reactions. The fashion shoots, while often mortifying, have been far and away my least tainted pleasure. And they’ve actually contributed to my wellbeing: I take my appearance (if nothing else) far less seriously than I used to.
So here’s to the new phase, and long may it continue, in glorious simplicity and mild blushes.
X
GG
PS sorry, that was all a bit ceremonious, but it felt nice.
PPS you might notice there isn’t actually a photo for today. Be realistic will you?
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.
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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