You're not wearing those are you?

Every girl has a pair of shoes that she loves. Mine are a pair of gold ballet flats, they’re comfy, stylish and go with most outfits. However, my boyfriend HATES them. Every time I wear them he looks at me like I have two heads and growls “you’re not wearing those again are you?”

What is it with men and fashion? They just don’t get it. Most men think that you only need three pairs of shoes: one pair for work; one pair for the weekend and one pair of trainers (which usually smell and are at least ten years old) and why do you need a bag when you can stuff everything your own into your pockets?

My boyfriend likes ‘sophisticated’ clothes which roughly translated means he would like me to dress as Ms Moneypenny seven days a week. Hardly practical.

A few seasons ago I bought a cape. It was probably not my best buy but I liked it at the time. It was fashionable. My boyfriend called it my Batman coat and sang the theme tune every time I wore it. In the end I relented and sold it on ebay. Somewhere, a girl like me is listening to the Batman theme tune right now….

I bought a pair of sunglasses a few weeks ago. They were expensive but my friends who I was shopping with at the time persuaded me to buy them. I tried them on when I got home and boyfriend looked at me with sheer horror and said I looked like Deirdre Barlow. They were Marc Jacobs for goodness sake! Again I relented and returned them (sorry girls). Just before I bought them I asked a guy in the shop if he liked them. He too looked at me with horror and said no. I should have listened to him.

Let’s face it girls, men and fashion are never a good mix. Unless of course you are a gay man (sorry dreadful stereotype but true most of the time!)

Stupid shoppers

Tuesday May 1 is set to be a monumental day. Crowds are already forming in central London. Is Tony Blair stepping down I hear you cry. Perhaps Nelson Mandela will be addressing crowds in Trafalgar Square. No something far more important is about to happen.

Are you ready? Can you stand the tension? Wait for it…..here goes….

Kate Moss is launching her clothing line in Top Shop. Yep, that’s right a clothing range. Shoppers will be allowed to enter the hallowed turf that is Top Shop Oxford Street to purchase 5 items of Kate’s range (and it’s a bloody awful range at that – hot pants, waistcoats. Very original).

I think the world is going mad. I mean, why would you queue to buy a couple of T shirts ‘designed’ by a model with no artistic integrity. I don’t think posing for a couple of photos which appear in Vogue gives you a green light to become a fashion designer. There are people studying at art schools all over the country that would kill for an opportunity like this. Oh yeah, I forgot, Kate Moss sells. Quite why I don’t know. Apparently every woman wants a piece of Kate (not me, she’s been near scuzzy Pete Doherty). We all want to look like her and dress like her. Don’t you?

A few weeks ago people queued outside Sainsbury’s all night to buy a £5 bag. Yes, all night. And then they promptly put them on ebay for 100 quid. I have one word to describe people who willingly pay £100 for a £5 bag. Fools. Actually can I have two words? Tossers. And it turns out that the bag isn’t organic and might not have been made in an ethical factory. Hmmm. Perhaps the twats (ooh, that’s three words, sorry) might have given the money to an ethical charity instead.

And don’t even get me started on Primark (I mean, why would anyone queue for hours to buy a dress for £5). And remember the scenes when Ikea opened in North London a few years ago?

Fools the lot of em.

Welcome to the ghetto

March 2007: I’m a Londoner. I was born there and raised there. Hell I even went to University there. London has so much to offer, it has amazing restaurants, beautiful parks and some of the best museums and galleries in the world. I’m a big fan of London. It’s a truly cool city.

April 2007: I wrote the above description last month when I was feeling a bit homesick. Sadly I’ve changed my mind and now I can’t wait to escape the city I grew up in. Last week I went home for a visit. And I was struck by the fact that the whole city has become a ghetto. Kids are being shot, stabbed or beaten up every day, the streets are filthy, people are just as filthy (have you been on a bus recently?) and most teenagers are obnoxious, ignorant little gobshites. Yeah I know what you’re thinking, she’s exaggerating. I really wish I was.

Scenario one: I’m sitting on a bus – top deck as there is no room downstairs. A group of teenager girls get on mobile phone on loud speaker so that everyone could hear the offensive hip hop they were listening to. They proceed to scream and shout for the next half an hour. Their language is appalling and their grammar and enunciation even worse. They made me feel ashamed. They had no regard for anyone on the bus and didn’t seem to care that they were offending people with their gutter tongues. So thanks very much Mr Livingstone for allowing them to travel for free on the buses. It makes my journey – and lots of other peoples journeys so much more lively.

Scenario two: I’m walking through Soho minding my own business. It’s about 9.30 on a Friday night. Its warm and I could almost be on the continent somewhere as I watch people drink coffee outside Bar Italia, soaking up the warm weather. Suddenly two guys walk past. One of them leers at a woman drinking her cappuccino and spits in her male companions face. They walk away laughing at their own bravado.

Scenario three; I’m sitting on the Piccadilly line watching the millions (well, it does seem like that) of stops to Heathrow Airport. A girl sitting opposite me takes a tangerine out of her bag. She peels it and as she does some of the peel falls to the floor. She looks at it but doesn’t bother to pick it up. She then dumps the remaining peel on the shelf behind her and gets off at Hounslow East.

You see what I mean? Londoners aren’t the friendly cheeky chappy types you see on Eastenders. They’re rude, ignorant and obnoxious. They drop litter, spit, get drunk and beat up innocent bystanders, push you through the tube barrier so they don’t have to pay, throw litter and never offer their seat on the tube or bus to someone who really needs it.

Will I be moving back to London when I return home in the summer? You must be bloody joking. I’m going to find a nice house in the suburbs and moan about the state of my home city to anyone who’ll listen.

Someone once said “If you are tired of London, you’re tired of life” (I can’t for the life of me remember who and even Google doesn’t appear to know). Well, I’m not tired of life but I’m certainly tired of London life. You can keep it.

Getting older

Last December I turned 35. I never really worry about getting old but turning 35 really hit me. I mean, that’s half of 70. I’m closer to 40 now than I am to 30. God, it’s all too depressing. Thankfully I don’t look my age but I do look more closely for lines and wrinkles and yesterday I spotted a couple of varicose veins (thanks mum!). According to a lot of teenagers I am officially old. And boy, do I feel it sometimes.

10 ways to spot you are getting old:

1. You look at the Kate Moss collection for Top Shop and think I remember wearing waistcoats in the 1980s. And as for those hot pants – I couldn’t get one thigh in them.

2. Who the hell are Razorlight?

3. You’d rather be gardening than drinking beer in an overcrowded, noisy beer garden in Camden.

4. Gardeners World is infinitely more interesting than the X Factor.

5. A glass of Chianti tastes so much nicer than an overpriced luminous cocktail.

6. You can now play scrabble for hours and even construct a couple of seven letter words.

7. You always read newspaper reports about new anti wrinkle creams.

8. You can’t climb over a railing without pulling a muscle in your thigh.

9. You couldn’t care less that hotel bars are now hip hangouts.

10. Doughnuts go straight to your thighs.

But you know what, I’d rather be 35 than 15. All those dreadful hormones….

The Queens English

Yesterday Stephen Fry said that anyone with a cut glass British accent can be a successful actor in the US just because of the way they speak.

I tend to agree with him. I have been told that my accent is “cute”, “awesome” “like the Queen’s” and “funny” on many occasions.

I would like to clarify that I do not have an upper class accent. I come from London not Surrey or Berkshire.

Yesterday I went to the dry cleaners to have some trousers shortened. It took me about five minutes to explain that I wanted them shortened to 27 and a half inches. The man in the cleaners looked at me. He scratched his head a few times, looked very perplexed and said 27 and a her? I said no, half, he said what and so I said it again (five more times actually). In the end I wrote it down and he looked at it and said ah, a half.

We live in Battery Park. Or Ballery if you are American. The fact that there are two T’s (count em) in Battery seems to make no difference. And try telling the barrista in Starbucks that you want a tall cappuccino. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been given TWO cappuccinos. I now ask for a regular which suits me as I hate having to use Starbucks speak anyway.

Once on a visit to Cape Cod I sat next to a man who asked me where I was from. I said London and he asked me where that was (yes he really did). I said England and he said “Oh that’s part if Ire-Land isn’t it?” I said actually it was close to Indonesia and he nodded his head.

Someone once asked me if I knew so and so from Kent. I said no, Kent was a big place and actually I’m from London. She looked at me like I was crazy and then said but I thought England was smaller than Texas. I replied that yes it was but there were still millions of people living in it.

Apparently Denise Van Outen has to take elocution lessons to help her get rid of her Essex accent. Americans don’t like it by all accounts. So if you have an accent like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings you’re OK, but if you sound like Pauline Fowler (sorry Denise) then you’ve got a problem.

As they would say in Brooklyn fugedaboutit.

That means forget about it apparently.

Name that tune

I love music. It gets me up in the mornings, it makes me run faster in the gym. Sometimes it makes me cry but most of the time it just makes me feel good.

Except when I hear crap lyrics. Sometimes I hear a song and I just think “what the hell was that?” It makes me cringe.

Take “Mancunian Way” by Take That. Now I really like Take That (yes, I’m sad) and I like their new album a lot. Except for aforementioned song. It’s just not very good. At one point Gary/Howard/Mark/other one sings “We used to think we were the bomb, then they dropped a real one”. Hmmm, not exactly poetic is it?

And what about this little gem from Lemar? “Cruising down the A406”. Very glamourous. It has a certain ring to it don’t you think?

And how many times have we heard these beauties?

“It’s Friday and I just got paid”

Phone conversation:
Man in deep, gruff voice: “Hey baby, what you doin?”
Girl in high pitched squeaky voice: “Hey honey, nutin’ I’m just waiting for you. I’m not wearing any underwear”
Man: “I’m comin’ over right now sweetness”

“Throw your hands in the air and wave em like you just don’t care”.

“Make some noise”

“Say ho-oh”

The list goes on and on and on.

My Room 101

As you have probably guessed there are a lot of things in this world that really get me annoyed. Ignorance, rudeness, racism, the list goes on and on and on. People annoy me too and here are my top ten annoying people (celebrities). Please note that this is just a selection of people who annoy me, there are lots, lots more.

1. Madonna - because she’s far too old to be wearing a leotard and even worse she’s married to a Mockney fool who makes awful films.

2. Bono – because he thinks he’s God and he encourages people to give their money to charity while squirreling away his own and evading taxes (allegedly). Doesn’t charity begin at home Mr Hewson?

3. Diana Ross – because she has big hair and an ego the size of Manhattan.

4. Jodie Marsh – for some bizarre reason she thinks she looks fabulous wearing a belt that just about covers her nipples. Jodie honey – LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

5. Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow – annoying Yoga couple who waffle on about macrobiotic diets. Coldplay were great when they started out, now they are just trying to be U2. Chris Martin used to just sing and play the piano. Now he does somersaults on stage. It must be stopped.

6. Paris Hilton. A prime example of someone who did not benefit from having an expensive schooling. Just goes to show that money can’t buy you intelligence. Or class come to think of it.

6. Robbie Williams. I’m fed up with his tortured soul routine. It’s boring.

7. Britney Spears. Note to self: if you do not want the paparazzi to hound you, it’s a good idea to wear knickers when you go out and not shave your head in public.

8. Pete Doherty. A complete waste of space. Pretends to be a tortured soul (see Robbie Williams) but is just a junkie who happens to have a famous girlfriend. And he couldn't write a good song to save his life.

9. Kate Moss. Answer me this Kate, when you are out partying with Junkie Pete, who’s looking after your daughter? Perhaps you should be spending more time with her and less time in the ladies.

10. Peaches Geldof. Dreadful dreadful child.

Going green

Ok, yesterday it was a balmy 67 degrees. People were sitting outside eating their lunch and you had to wear sunglasses. Tomorrow it’s going to snow. Yes that’s right, snow.

This freak weather is really scary. I watched Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ a few weeks ago and it really got me worried.

Americans are not really very eco-friendly. OK, that’s probably a generalisation but in my experience being green in NY means celebrating the national day of drunkenness (St Patrick’s Day). They drive everywhere, get on a plane at the drop of a hat and all the lights in Time Square must use up enough energy to light a whole town for a year.

I was watching the news yesterday and there was a piece about light bulbs. If every American switched to using eco friendly light bulbs the amount of energy saved is phenomenal (they also save you money too). It’s a no brainer right? Wrong, it seems that some Americans don’t want to switch because the bulbs “look funny” (yes that is a direct quote from a woman being interviewed). I screamed at the TV when she said that causing my boyfriend to ask me if I was OK.

Our apartment has the worse lighting system ever. We have three lamps (without eco friendly bulbs) and no main light. This means that you have to have all three lamps and the light in the hallway on in order to get enough to light to read (and it’s still too dark). My eyesight has gotten worse since I moved here because I have to sit right underneath a lamp to see the words on the page. Same goes for the bedroom – three lamps and no overhead light. Hello, wouldn’t it have been simpler to install a main overhead light?

And then there’s the supermarket. They have these plastic bags which say “new stronger style, no need to double bag”. So, what do the cashiers do? Yep, they double bag. I get so exasperated having to say every time “no it’s OK, I don’t need TWO bags”.

And how about the fact that here in our apartment block we can’t recycle glass? Or the fact that everything has twice as much packaging as it really needs?

I’m not saying that Americans are the only people to not embrace being green but when I hear them complaining about the weather I really want to scream.

Being green isn’t really optional anymore and I think that a lot of people still don’t understand that it doesn’t mean you are a long haired hippy, it just means you want to preserve our planet for future generations.

There, rant over