In which I am a disgrace to the noble name of summer.

Printed 09/07/09.

If winter is about hibernation, autumn about Back to School, and spring about new life and cleaning things, then for me summer is characterised by the perpetual, nagging feeling that everyone else is somewhere else, doing something exciting without you.

Particularly so with the British summer, where all normal tasks must be suspended in case the last of the sun is suddenly used up while you’re doing them. I’ve started experiencing Summer Guilt, whereby during everyday mundane activity, like queuing in HSBC, I am suddenly tortured by the feeling I am wasting the weather and should instead be drinking Pimms in a leafy beer garden with a man who looks like Javier Bardem. I’m letting the side down, I know. If you promise it will go no further, I’ll even confess this: I haven’t been to a single barbecue yet.

I suppose the truth must be that I live in fear of intervention from the Summer Police – that Ben Fogle or someone will break my door down, screaming, “Watching the Top Gear with the curtains closed, are we? Quick, get up and go do Tai Chi on a hilltop! NOW, before it all stops for another year! Go!”.

But it is especially true when living in London, where, in the absence of sea, countryside or draught cider for less than a remortgage, we are forced to create our own little pockets of pretend summer to distract us from the traffic, tourists, and lingering smell of feet in every tube carriage. You lot are ok, you have bonafide British summertime on your doorsteps. I don’t remember every having Summer Guilt in Worthing – everything you do is accidentally summery. Anytime you’re not getting your proper fill of sunshiney holiday fun, all that’s needed is a casual stroll past those palm trees by the Lido and you’re topped up for another week.

But here I have to go out of my way to do the weather justice. Like yesterday, for example, when I went to Hampstead Ladies’ bathing pond. That’s right, pond. And that isn’t a quaint urban re-branding, like when we call any part of the city without a branch of Subway a ‘village’, that’s an actual, genuine pond. Green water, ducks swimming, disconcerting brushes of animation against your knee when you least expect it. It was like swimming in a pre-Raphaelite painting; like being a host of otherworldly water nymphs (albeit water nymphs in a selection of M&S tankinis). It was summer to the max.

I feel then, that I am now justified in sitting here, watching Top Gear with the curtains closed, because there is pond slime in my hair. Next weekend, if I just stand with sand between my toes for several hours, I should keep the summer police happy enough for whole days of bank queuing. Just promise me this: next time you’re all enjoying a casual barbecue on Goring Gap of an evening, send me a postcard won’t you?

* * * * * * * * * *

Rupert Grint had swine flu! Everybody’s favourite teenage wizard (sorry Radcliffe, but you know it’s true) is recovering from a “mild bout” of everybody’s favourite pandemic disease. Far from being worrying, this is actually a pretty encouraging story. I particularly like the words “mild bout”, which I am using as evidence to support my theory that actually, I may have had swine flu already and just not realised it (after all, what do I drink so much Berocca for if not to get my immune system in such good shape that I can have swine flu without knowing it?). Presumably a quick administering of the Tamifluiarmus charm set Rupert on the road to recovery.

* * * * * * * * * *

And so, Wimbledon is over for another year. I’m sure you can sense my pain. My two most exciting moments from this year’s competition: 1) finding out that Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are not, in fact, one and the same person. 2) The woman seated behind Pete Sampras’ head during the live coverage of the men’s final, whose blouse buttons came undone on screen, and were not done up again for at least 20 minutes. Folks, I’m practically a sports fan.

In which Michael Jackson died. We think.

Printed 30/06/09

Right, so here we are, the death of a legend. Cue appropriate wailing, and blasts of Billie Jean from shops, pubs and car windows at 12-second intervals. Strange thing is, for my generation, this is pretty much our first one. Our Lennon, our Elvis. It’s our chance to remember where we were when, and then make up a better story to tell at dinner parties years down the line.

I know we had Diana, but to my mind she doesn’t count. Largely because we didn’t ‘have’ Diana - our parents did, the paparazzi did, but to my nine-year-old self she was just a nice lady with fairly dodgy hair, who everyone suddenly seemed to like an awful lot more after she’d gone. In fact, my strongest memory from that day in ’97 was anger that CBBC had been cancelled to make room for identical news broadcasts across all four channels*. Baffling was it that adults could run so many areas of the world so effectively, but fail to think of putting all the identical news into one big broadcast, so that the rest of us could watch Byker Grove in peace.

It seems that the deaths of these legendary figures serve to mark not only cultural milestones, but also the progression of technology – for me, the amazing thing about Jacko’s demise wasn’t that it happened, but just how quickly everybody knew about it. Within the space of 15 minutes on Thursday night, I had four texts, two phonecalls, 10 facebook updates and 106 Google news stories, all proclaiming the same shocked, if hazy statement: “Michael Jackson’s dead! Probably…”.

Because the thing about our media culture now is that quantity and quality are inversely proportional; what we have in abundance, the web posts, social networking hubs, permanently reachable contacts at the push of a few Blackberry buttons, we lack in reliability.

For everyone who heard the news that night, there was no one, solemn, bombshell but instead several hours of high-energy dithering. “He’s dead! He’s not! He is! We don’t know!” shrieked the world’s press, while the assembled audience had to decide which sources they trusted most (most of my friends plumping for national loyalty with “I won’t believe it until the BBC say it’s true”, an option that proved just slightly speedier than carrier pigeon.). Meanwhile Uri Geller’s statement of grief managed to be released even before confirmation of the death was, a coup we’ll attribute to his psychic skills and not just the desire to pip Elizabeth Taylor to the PR post.

So in decades to come, when my children ask me where I was when, there won’t be a romantic answer. No “I was on a bridge at sunrise, and Earth Song just happened to be playing”, or even the far superior “I was at Glastonbury”. My answer will be “On the Mac in the spare room with my mouse poised over the refresh button”. Whether the King of Pop would have considered a million Facebook statuses as a fitting tribute to his life, I don’t know, but it seems that’s just the way we do things now. RIP, Michael.

*Yes, four channels. None of this round-the-clock digital entertainment you kids today have, oh no. In my day, we were content with just a Gameboy, a Babybell and a copy of Live and Kicking magazine to keep us occupied.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh, the heat! Oh my, oh me! The kind of heat where even naked isn’t cool enough. In an attempt to count my blessings, find a silver lining, turn that frown upside down etc etc, I have realised this: while being unemployed is rather a drag, and the heatwave is turning me into Sweatzilla, I should be glad that both are happening at the same time. Because being unemployed in 28 degree heat means parks, Calippos, and idle re-readings of Look magazine, being employed would mean polyester shirts, ineffective desk fans, and sauna-like tube journeys standing in a fat man’s armpit. So thank you, recession, for giving me a summer.

* * * * * * * * * *

Finally, my favourite overheard conversation of the week. This time from a lady in Brighton’s Sydney Street, with perhaps the most sensitive and touching eulogy anyone could offer:

“I’m so upset about Michael Jackson,” Lady tells Friend. “Yeah? Really?”, says Friend. “Yeah, really cut up,” says Lady. “You see, I’ve had him on my Celebrity Death List for the last four years, then the one year I swap him for Elizabeth Taylor, he goes and dies. Steve got him instead. I could have won a hundred quid.”

“That’s tough”, says Friend. “Yeah”, says Lady.

In which I smell musty, but it's all for charidee.

Printed 25/06/09.

There's a quiet revolution afoot on the high street. Maybe it's a recession thing (isn't everything, now, a recession thing?), or maybe I've just been shopping in flea-bitten vintage emporiums for too long to notice, but something's definitely shifting.

For starters, Dorothy Perkins has got quite nice. After years of being River Island's frumpy sister, full of jersey and smocking and mother-of-the-bride wear for teen mums in later years, Dotty Ps has finally hit on a winning formula. "Let's make the same stuff as Topshop, but cheaper, bigger, and without the whiff of sprightly 15-year-old Skins-alikes to drag you away from that lace cropped top". Applause to Ms Perkins!

And for main course*, there's the fact I've started shopping there again. Which mightn't sound it, but I promise you is conclusive proof of either a total high street renaissance, or a post-graduation identity crisis. Yes, I will hold my hands up and say openly, "My name is Lauren Bravo and I was a highstreetaphobic."
(Hello Lauren).

So deeply internalised was the fear of seeing anyone else in the same stuff as me, particularly if they looked thinner/better/were Mischa Barton, that I spent five-odd years as a strident, second-hand-only shopper ('odd' being, in hindsight, the operative word).

But now, for dessert, comes the irony – just as I'm running, open-armed, back to the high street crying, "Mother H&M, can you ever forgive me?", charity shops are suddenly upping their game. Thanks to Mary Portas and her crisp-shirted brand of retail genius, Chazzer Shops are back on the fashion menu.

But, and here's the catch, only if we keep them alive with a consistent stream of unwanted Mulberry Bags, Jaeger jumpers and trendy young customers. It's great news for the charities, naturally, and for everyone with all that unworn Whistles just bursting out of their wardrobes, but I for one will miss the tat.

Having been born and bred a charity shop devotee, I can sniff out a 75p Jackie annual at 100 paces. Ditto, a C&A ra-ra skirt, commemorative royal wedding milk jug, or Mousetrap, original 70s box, only the little plastic man missing, £1.49. That rummage in the bargain bin is part of the experience, supplying the unique thrill that comes from not knowing if you'll come up with a Fabergé egg or a used fondue set (cheese attached).

*Realise now I've typed it that, actually, that isn't the way the phrase works. But it should be, so I am leaving it.

* * * * * * * * * *

I SUSPECT, though, that there will always be a place for the tat somewhere among the Kurt Geiger boots, because one thing that Mary Queen of Charity Shops served to highlight more than anything else was the unrelenting stoicism of the elderly volunteers.

Did I say stoicism? I meant pig-headed narrow mindedness. For the most part. "Oooh I don't like it… too much change… it isn't like the old days," they chorused every time the shop got a new lick of paint or a pair of tennis shoes had its price upped 25p.

"Come ON!" you wanted to scream. "You lived through a world war! Your generation has endured rationing, nuclear threat, four recessions and the career of Noel Edmonds! You've made it through everything the 20th century had to throw at you, and you've done it all without your hair even moving! Can you really not cope with this?"

"Just put your tabard on and think of England, there's a good pensioner."

* * * * * * * * * *

TO round off my consumerist theme this week, I'd like to issue my congratulations to Worthing for the long-awaited arrival of its new H&M. About time, too, and yar boo sucks to Horsham.

Now, as far as I can see, there are only two notable gaps left in the town's retail landscape, if we are to claim our official crown as the Shopping Jewel of the South Coast (when you can't for whatever reason go to Brighton): Primark, and Pret A Manger.

Once the day comes when I can spend an afternoon bulk-buying £2 knickers and then celebrate with a nice crayfish and avocado wrap, I might just find reason to abandon Oxford Street and visit my homeland more often.

In which there are green shoots. There! No, over there! Nope, gone again.

Printed 18/06/09.

The recession has ended! Apparently. It has, I read it in a paper, and they never lie.

Admittedly I did read only that; those words, “The Recession Has Ended”, before thinking “oh good” then skipping on to a recipe for something involving goat’s cheese, but I know I definitely saw it. And while I accept that it isn’t maybe the most reliable approach, to garner all of my current affairs knowledge from the snippets of headlines I see while I’m looking for Times2, it usually serves me well. I know that Ronaldo is leaving somewhere to go somewhere else, potentially Paris Hilton’s hotel room, I know that the Foxy Knoxy tag is really getting a bit tired now (in the latest pictures she, like, totally has a cold sore), and I know that whatever David Miliband may or may not be doing, he is definitely no relation to the Steve Miller Band, and I know that for sure.

But you see, it wasn’t really laziness that prompted me to flick on and not read the rest of the article. It was an active decision, fuelled by a delicate balance of derision, disbelief, and plain old dread. For one, there is the knowledge that sub editors are crafty weasels, prone to writing promising things like The World is Best it’s Ever Been, Cheryl is Leaving Ashley or Lady Ga-ga Garrotted by Own Pants, only for the full story to reveal a distinctly less exciting, completely tenuous, truth (“the world is the best it’s ever been”, say handicraft enthusiasts constructing ninth model of the solar system out of papier maché; Cheryl is leaving Ashley… for an overnight shopping trip to Roberto Cavalli Kids; Lady Ga-ga actually was garrotted by own pants, but survived and now everyone is doing it.).

So I knew it was pretty likely that if I read “Recession Has Ended”, it would be revealed all too quickly that what they actually meant was that somewhere, far off in the dark reaches of economics (a place I like to think of as the Pie-Chart Pleasuredome), a statistic had shifted. And this little statistic, like a domino, had bumped into a few other statistics, jigged everything round a bit, and put into motion the enormously long train of events that will mean, in perhaps a decade, we can buy chewing gum for a sensible amount of pocket change again.

I knew that was probably the reality, and so I chose the path of blissful ignorance. I can believe it’s all over, if nobody tells me otherwise. Conversely, though, was the acknowledgement that actually I don’t want to know because I sort of don’t want it to be. Not yet. Not quite.

Because, as a fresh-out-of-the-box graduate, the recession was turning into perhaps the most convenient excuse there is. I’ve spent entire evenings sat in student pubs, common rooms, the back of the 43 bus, saying things like “yar, of course I don’t have a graduate job lined up… it’s the recession… I’ll be lucky if Wimpy let me operate the desert carousel…”. But now, if it really is all over, I am forced to face the truth, that recession or no recession, there are no jobs for new journalists anywhere. At all. The media is full.
On the plus side, that goat’s cheese tart was really very good. And if Ronaldo and Amanda Knox ever get together, I promise I will read the article word for word.

* * * * * * * * * *

I must start writing down every fantastic soundbite I overhear on the streets, potentially with a view to turning them into a Christmas stocking-filler bestseller (everyone else in the world having written one already, I feel a bit left out). Here, for you lucky readers, an extract of my favourites:

Man on Bike on Phone, as he whizzed past – “I hope you’ve been to the Doctor’s to get it looked at.”

Woman at Table at Pavement Café – “Actually, we didn’t ask her about the body hair...”

Yummy Mummy in Caffe Nero, Highgate – “I wish I could come, but I have a pasta-tasting session and I don’t want to be late for pilates.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Last week, an unpublished T.S. Eliot poem was discovered. This made me very happy. Firstly, because I am a geek. Secondly, because it makes my degree all seem worth something when I can sigh “ahhh, Eliot” and gaze off into the middle distance in a knowing manner. And Thirdly, because the poem was all about his deep mistrust of cows.

As anyone who has ever seen me try to interact with a dog/cat/goldfish will know, I am not an animal lover, and I can’t help thinking this should be the first in a long tradition of anti-animal poetry, as payback for all the insipid tripe that has been written over the years about people’s ickle fluffy cats. I will write the next one, and it shall be called ‘Don’t You Point that Ferret at Me.”

In which I might revert to Mr and Mrs Red Hat.

Printed 11/06/09.

Reading. One of life's pleasures. I refer you to the conveniently-relevant Groucho Marx, who said: "Outside a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read."

Actually, Groucho is one of the very few (two) impressions that I can do with any conviction*, and honing it may have to become my new free-time hobby, now that I have an aversion to reading, and more free time than ever before in which to not read.

(Ladies and gentleman, an emblem for our times – the unemployed graduate! Watch in amazement as she spends an entire afternoon peeling every single bit of white off a tangerine, without ever getting out of bed! Gaze in astonishment as she works her way through every episode of The Wire, while using her council tax bill as a coaster! Step away from the bars, little Jimmy, you're too young to see this..).

Yes, I'm now allergic to books. Like the proverbial busman and his holiday (a sentiment that one can't help feeling died a little with the introduction of air travel), my English degree has succeeded in turning me off literature.

I'm miffed at this, because one of the only things that kept me going through my exams was the promise that when it was all over, I could settle down to work my way through every book I hadn't yet read. Which is rather a lot of them, truth be told, and could probably keep me occupied as I hibernated through this, and several more recessions.

What's more, it would be reading for pleasure. No analysis, no annotation, no pipe-smoking prof at the end of it setting me questions like, "If Eliot's brand of modernism is a reaction against modernity, then how does Chaucer's Knight influence Pope's attitude to sugar tongs?".

I would rediscover the joy of narrative twists that you didn't already know from sparknotes.com, of characters that you can fall in love with because nobody has told you they're actually a comment on fascism. I could read poems without my exam-brain-filter on, the one that screams, "Alliteration! Imagery! Trochaic metre! Alliteraaaaation!" at every line and then makes me eat a biscuit.

But, alas, I can't do it. On my first day of freedom, I picked up Virginia Woolf's classic To The Lighthouse. I read a page. Then I re-read the page, because all I had taken in was "Family... beach... lighthouse... blargh... gaagugh... dbafaujshEHFG... gdcbdchdsgcsjhg" then started thinking about a big cheese and pickle sandwich.

After three attempts, I had to admit defeat and buy New! magazine, spend an hour catching up with Cheryl, Jordan, Peter, Britters, Kerry and the gang, and eat the sandwich.

But I should say that I did read all the big words in New! – ok, so perhaps that's my solution. I shall start there, maybe work my way up to Heat, the Grazia when I'm ready, and before I know it I shall be devouring Proust in single sittings and my degree will not have been completely wasted.

In the meantime, when I need some culture, there's always that Groucho routine.

*The other is Miss Piggy, and that's largely in the hair.

* * * * * * * * *

I'm getting home from Paris tomorrow, to find a newbie in my house.

He will be the 13th person (and second Australian) to reside in the place since we moved in two years ago, and now I'm the only original housemate left – a situation that I suspect might soon turn me into a shorter, less hairy Basil Fawlty, in my student hotel.

Of course, New Bloke may well be a domestic whizz, a social superman and an all-round, life-enriching pleasure to know, and let's hope he is.But there's a part of me that can't help thinking, after all the good luck we've had with the other move-ins, we're just about due a psychopath who will steal our salmon, dry his pants in the microwave and murder us all in our beds. Fingers crossed, eh?

But to take a tip from Fawlty in dealing with the new addition – just don't mention Crocodile Dundee.

* * * * * * * * * *

What's a holiday without a trip to a cemetery? Yesterday, I braved torrential rain in a sundress to walk around Père Lachaise, the biggest graveyard in Paris.

While Jim Morrison's headstone elicited the appropriate reaction (to sing The End in my best growly voice to passing mourners all afternoon), Oscar Wilde's tomb was by far the best of the day. Following the example of hundreds of other visitors, I put on my best red lipstick to kiss the monument in tribute to the dandy. It was only afterwards I realised I may have given Mr Wilde an unintentional cold sore.

If you can get Zovirax in the afterlife, Oscar, I will foot the bill.

In which I strive to be a slummy mummy.

Printed 10/06/09.

My friends can always be relied on for existential wisdom and direction. Together we have bushed back the boundaries of Western thought with such gems as “Take the road less travelled, there might not be sick on the pavement” and “If you stomp down the rubbish, you don’t need to empty the bin as often”.
So when Kirsty marched into my room yesterday to announce her plans for the future, they were naturally received with all the reverence they deserved. “The best thing about babies,” she mused, “is the tiny, tiny shoes. They make me happy. So I think I’m going to have a baby and just cover it in shoes.” I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, was this merely a hungover moment of mental abstraction, or actually a strikingly perceptive comment on the materialist exploitation of motherhood in the 21st century?

Now, admittedly our views on maternity are skewed, partly because of Brad and Angelina, and partly because we live in Highgate. Which is like a safari park of fashionable parenthood, where you can watch the yummy mummies in their natural habitat and occasionally throw them bits of gluten-free bran muffin. But while I should be wildly cynical, resenting their latte conferences and Baby Gap discipleship, the only thing I’ve actually got from two years of observation is this: it looks fun.

So while to stand up and say “I’m Lauren Bravo and my new life plan is to find a solvent husband and have a brood of adorable children” would be falling off my sudo-intellectual feminist horse with a big noisy thud (and the bruises would look dreadful at mother and baby yoga), I’ll admit it’s tempting. More tempting, anyway, than the prospective years of coffee-making at Cross-Stitch For You magazine to claw my way into journalism. Or getting a sensible career as an office pot plant waterer. Or getting a cat.

What’s more, children themselves seem to be giving me the signal. Suddenly they approve. Where babies used to look at me and cry, or vomit, now I get coos of appreciation and interesting bus banter with six-year-olds. Perhaps it is because my hair looks like Malibu Barbie, or custard, but there’s a little part of me that thinks the infants of the world are uniting to say “Be a 50s throwback, Lauren! Forget careers and be a hip young mum! Buy tiny ,tiny Converse and go to the Disney Store without being judged!”

So there’s my new plan. I will develop a new breed of yummy mummy, one who doesn’t have to do pilates or have an affair with her personal trainer, or have the personal trainer to have an affair with, but does get to spend her time forgetting her degree and forging new artistic directions in finger painting. It will be great. I have the names picked out already – just to make sure the last three years of higher ed weren’t completely wasted, I plan to have Milton, Ezra and Virginia, tastefully-shod, before long.

* * * * * * * * * *

Just as you were thinking the programme itself was more entertainment than a simple human could handle, I decided to turn it up a notch and invented Britain’s Got Talent Cliché Bingo.

Rules were as follows: one point for, “It’s just so great to be here”, “You’re what this show is all about”, or Amanda Holden’s tears; five points for “You’ve been on an incredible journey”, “I’m going to give it 110 per cent”, or a sob story about a dead relative; ten points for “It’s now or never”, “Anything could happen”, or one of Piers Morgan’s special three-point analogies (“Jenson Button won the Grand Prix today, and he’s like you – he’s fast, he’s fantastic… and he’s… British…”). The time goes by so much quicker when you have your own dream to reach for.

* * * * * * * * * *

It was with great pleasure that we stumbled out of the o2 arena after our graduation ball on Saturday night to find the sun had risen. Having not mustered this kind of superhuman partying energy since first year, or maybe ever, we were thrilled to find that in our last, fleeting days of studenthood, we had finally become hardcore. Unfortunately this was somewhat undermined by the massive bag of flipflops and quilted slippers we took along for the inevitable weary shoe-change.

The inevitable weary shoe-change took place at 11.45.

In which summer girl doesn't sweat it.

Printed 10.06.09.

We all know her. We all want to be her. We all think she’s lovely, and we all secretly want to beat her to death with a shoe. She’s Summer Girl, and she’s here again.

Summer Girl is a freak, mutant strain of woman. She’s like a Disney cartoon come to life, whichever one it was that had woodland creatures greet her each morning and looked great in denim hotpants. On Sunday, while the rest of us woke up, saw the weather, and ran around the kitchen in our pants, wielding a razor and shrieking “Not yet! Not yet! I haven’t done the Special K diet or had microdermabrasion on my elbows!”, Summer Girl is the one who calmly rolled out of bed, pulled on something tiny and wafty made of linen, and had bluebirds braid her hair while she sipped iced tea from a rosebud.

Summer Girl smells like a cotton-fresh breeze and looks like a cool glass of lemonade. She comes pre-painted in an even shade of malted milk biscuit. Summer Girl never gets blisters. She can wear smock tops without looking pregnant, maxi dresses without looking elderly, and gladiator sandles without looking like a bad school play.

Summer Girl has boundless energy, and likes to spend her time engaged in semi-sporting pursuits like Frisbee and tree-climbing. She will insist on climbing to the bit of the hill with the best view, while you were content to eat the picnic in the car park. She can do all of this with zeal, because Summer Girl never sweats. She doesn’t even glow, but retains a velvety-matte finish at all times. She never finds herself adhered to leather upholstery, and she never buys a Big Issue just to use it as a makeshift fan.
But the interesting thing about Summer Girl is that she, like a delicate flower, only blooms for a short while. Her glory period is May to August, and maybe the occasional freak heatwave in March. The rest of the year she conserves her energy by being mediocre, hiding the perfect limbs beneath big jumpers and boring jeans, biding her time until the day she will coolly eat a 99 without ever, at any moment, getting a milky moustache.

“Where is Summer Guy?” I hear you cry. The answer is: nowhere in Britain. We don’t have any, I spent half an hour checking. If you think you’ve spotted one in the street, he will definitely have been shipped over from Italy, Australia, or somewhere else with more sun and less polyester.

* * * * * * * * * *

London public transport being not quite the regular funfair of joyous distraction you might think, I would like to issue heartfelt thanks to the man I met on the 134 bus on Tuesday. Now, even the least cynical of city dwellers will agree that 92.2 per cent of strangers who talk to you on buses are immediately, or later turn out to be, creepy.

So when this one sat down next to me, I’ll admit I was expecting the usual trio of wheezy breathing, BO and mild racism. Imagine my surprise when instead, I got genuine entertainment. After hacking his lungs up in the aisle and following with two trumpeting sneezes, he leaned in, sighed and said, “I should never have gone to Mexico”. Bus man, you made my day.

Assuming you were joking, that is.

* * * * * * * * * *

This week, I quit my job. I gave many legitimate, justifiable reasons for this: being paid less than an MP’s dental floss allowance; having to work for nine hours straight without a sit-down; wanting to go ‘travelling’ (read: ‘on holiday’); finishing my degree and needing to give myself a kick to ‘pursue my dream career’ (‘watch the last season of Mad Men on the internet’); not enjoying being spied on via CCTV; not liking the pressure of working on commission; not liking the pressure of working generally.

What I did not give was the actual reason – that after five months spent in a shop staring at a sign that read “No Photo’s”, I had finally cracked. In the “Reason for leaving last job” box on my next application form, I fully intend to write “apostrophe abuse”.

In which I have no plan, Stan.

Printed 20/05/09.

I thought today I would start with a little mental workout for you all, in the spirit of sudoku and Dr Kawashimi's Brain Training (always quick to pick up on a trend, me). So here are some quasi-philosophical questions for you to ponder with your Shreddies:

How long is a piece of string?

How can you ever know if the fridge light really goes off when you close the door?

How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?

If Victoria Beckham falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear her, does she make any money?

And this last one, my own thought for the week – Where is the true self revealed, in what we do, or in what we tell everyone we're doing? Or, more specifically, what we tell elderly relatives we're doing?

It's a hot topic because round about now, up and down the country, over many cups of tea and malted milk biscuits, final year students are embroiled in the careful fabrication of a "plan" for eager, well-meaning ears. They're embellishing, padding and polishing the truth as if their lives depended on it – which of course, their fake lives actually do.

In short, they're making it up. But this is perfectly excusable lying. It's lying necessary for the smooth running of society, like "this won't hurt a bit", "honestly, nobody even noticed the spinach" or "Madge, you don't look a day over 30".

Because nothing is crueller than asking a soon-to-be graduate, "so what are you going to do now?", and people should realise this.

There was a time, I believe, when having a degree was considered achievement enough in itself. You could waltz out of the hall in the cap and gown, and into a grace period of several lazy years in which people massaged your clever feet and asked for help with their crosswords.

No longer. Now they chase you with sticks, shrieking, "What's the plan? What's the plan?" until you are forced to take shelter behind an application form. Nobody is brave enough to admit the truth, that the nearest they have to a "plan" is finally washing up that coffee mug and working through every episode of CSI in a weekend.

Because to say it out loud is to admit defeat, and resign yourself to the fact that that novel probably won't get written, the Euromillions jackpot probably won't be rolling your way, and maybe you did spend 30-odd grand of loan on equipping you to work in Spar.

So we lie. We say things like "I'm going to take time out to do a bit of travelling" or "there's a friend of a friend's uncle's cousin's dad who can probably get me into DeLoitte", which translates as "I'm going to Marbella for a week to do some amateur podium dancing", and "there's an accountants down the road who say they'll let me do their shredding".

And we churn out the stories until the relative or family friend in question looks satisfied, and we've almost started to believe our own hype. Maybe if I say it convincingly enough, for long enough, one day I'll wake up and really will be freelancing for the Guardian.

I could be the girl who cried "career".

* * * * * * * * * *

Being the last person left who still believes in the sanctity of celebrity marriage, the break-up of Jordan and Peter hit me pretty hard. While Katie claims to be "devastated" that Peter's decided to leave her, perhaps she can seek comfort at M&S – as of last week, the high street retailer admitted defeat over their storm in a D-cup, and bustier ladies will no longer have to pay more for larger-size bras.

But despite the extra pennies, it still looks like she'll be holding onto her assets pretty firmly in the divorce courts.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sad times this weekend, as for the first time since 1996, your faithful columnist missed her favourite socio-political event of the year, Eurovision.

Partly in protest at Wogan's absence, and partly because the call of the pub was stronger than any number of lycra-clad Latvian warblers, she chose to give this one a miss and see just how much Eurovision really contributes to her life.

The result was a performance of Brotherhood of Man's Save Your Kisses for Me, with dance routine, to an assembled audience in a Camden beer garden. The answer was "a lot".

Next year she promises she will be back on form – with scorecards, Euro-themed snacks and a smile.

In which we all have a touch of class. But some have been touched more than others.

Printed 14/05/09.

Well chase me aunt fanny round the gasworks, Kate Winslet’s working class! Don’t be fooled by the accent, she’s actually a pickled onion-munching pauper, and gosh darn-it does she want us all to know. I know I’m a bit late coming to this one, but as it’s finals-time I’ve taken up residence in the British Library under a mountain of intellectual expectancy. Which is a terribly middle class thing to be doing, isn’t it? Kate, have mercy on me.

Though actually, I should be showing some sisterly support for the Oscar-winning star, because she set out to highlight a point I’ve been trying to stomp home for the past three years: that a nice voice don’t necessarily mean a nice bank balance. Yes, burdened myself with an accent that’s a little more Port-Out-Starboard-Home than P&O ferry, I completely understand where she’s coming from (the ghetto of Reading, apparently). People hear the twang, and assume trust fund. If I had a pound for every time I’ve found myself in a conversation at uni where it was just assumed I went to public school, I’d have enough to buy a Cheltenham Ladies’ hoodie. Or a pony.

But is it really about money? Of course not. Kate’s defense of her ‘working class’ upbringing was, after all, based on holidays in Cornwall and 10p pocket money a week from her struggling actor parents. But what’s more middle class than Cornish holidays? Or struggling actors? Or making sure your children know the value of a penny chew? Or, if we’re honest, er, banging on about being poorer than everyone thinks you are?

The hilarious bit, you see, isn’t picturing La Winslet down Mecca Bingo, or tucking into a Findus crispy pancake with this week’s Take a Break in hand. What’s funny is the way she, like everyone else nowadays, so vehemently rejects any association with that smug tribe of houmous-eating, welly-wearing, theatre-going, Waitrose-shopping wannabes we call the middle classes. She may not be afraid of impaling herself on a cut-glass vowel, but God forbid the world might think she knows her way round an aga.

So I ask, whatever happened to the Hyacinth Buckets of the world? After decades of previous generations pruning their shrubberies into submission to make it into the hallowed middle ground, suddenly we’re all desperate to be salt-of-the-earth again. Flee the middle classes, you squares! Find a great-uncle who was a cobbler, and milk it for all it’s worth! We don’t want to be middle class because ‘middle class’ equates to pretension, draughty windows, olive oil-tasting parties and children named Octavia. But then ‘working class’ means TV dinners, package holidays in Magaloof, casual violence and children named Aiymeee, doesn’t it? Or did Holiday Showdown teach me wrong?

You’re throwing your unspecific class-neutral breakfast at the page right now, I know, but bear with me. There are the subdivisions to talk about. Because being lower middle class is a very different thing to being middle middle class, darling. It’s the difference between Delia and Nigella. Or Debenhams and Harvey Nichols. Or laminate flooring and stripped-down hardwood boards. Lower middle is quite a comfy place to be, I reckon, as one who’s probably been sitting in it for 21 years. We still get to watch Britain’s Got Talent non-ironically, and we don’t ever have to wear a Barbour jacket or go to Nepal to find ourselves.

So yes, class is tricky. It must have all been so much easier back when it was down to top hat vs bowler hat vs flat cap – now all the headgear’s exclusively the preserve of trendster fourteen-year-olds, and nobody knows how to define it anymore. Or, obviously, if it matters an iota.

Some believe the best indicator of class is which newspaper you read. So I’ll take this opportunity to say: Herald readers, you’re in a class of your own.

In which I am almost definitely dying.

Printed 07/05/09.

In the life of every university finalist, there is a dream. For most it’s a distant dream, yet still one that provides elusive hope throughout the exam period. It’s the ultimate prize, the get-out-of-failure-free card. It will turn that frown upside down. It will strap you safely into the super-express highway to high earning. It’s just a little piece of paper, but it has big dreams for you. It’s the extenuating circumstances form.

Extenuating circumstances are like the sob story that gets talentless oiks through to the finals of TV talent shows. Except that the student who wins the extenuating circumstances prize will not be talentless, nor an oik, but a gifted individual with a gammy foot and some gumption. They’re the ones brave enough to stand up, take a deep breath and say, “I did bad. But it, like, totally wasn’t my fault.” And I applaud them.

While many are called, few are chosen. Extenuating circumstances themselves can present something of an academic challenge, balancing just the right note of pathetic misfortune with a good dose of conscientious student moral. “Dear Mr Nice Kind Examiner. I’m sorry my essay on Hamlet was just a paragraph-long synopsis of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Last Action Hero followed by a cartoon drawing of Groucho Marx eating a pie, but I had a bit of a dicky tummy at the time. It later turned out to be dysentery. I can still have a First, yeah?”

Exam halls are pretty much a greenhouse of festering maladies anyway, the rattling coughs and synchronised sniffing echoing off the walls like performance art. But there will always be a couple who have it worse than the rest; those who need sun lamps or traction or freestanding drips. The lucky sods.

Of course, extenuating circumstances are also the hypochondriac’s meal ticket. Headaches become migraines become brain tumours, leg cramp is definitely DVT and could that twitchy eyelid be a small stroke? Of course it could! Get that form, quick, before the Nurofen starts working!

But right now, none of that creativity is even needed - the press are handing us panic on a platter. So it’s their fault that I’ve spent more time in the British Library bleating “I inhaled on the tube, Mum! I can feel the disease in my actual pores!” than reading Henry IV, and their fault that all my dreams are haunted by visions of myself with a snout. Yes, what could be more compatible than a six-hour Shakespeare exam and a timely bout of swine flu?

It doesn’t help that the symptoms are so pedestrian. Headache? Fever? Nausea? Tiredness? I run the whole gamut of warning signs during a standard trip to the big Topshop, how the heck am I not supposed to worry? Plus, the lifestyle of a finalist lends itself so well to thinking you’re dying – heart palpitations from the espresso consumption, aching joints from hard library chairs, general sense of overwhelming pressure smooshing you into the floor like a fly under the thumb of responsibility.

So when, on Thursday night before my Shakespeare marathon, I developed a sudden ‘fever’, it was impossible not to adopt my Beth in Little Women pose of martyred tragedy as I lay back and waited to be discovered by my adoring flatmates. Could I do an exam from my hospital bed? Would I be the girl on the front page of The News of the World, “I Did My Finals With Swine Flu”? Would I get to meet Lorraine Kelly or maybe write a bestselling memoir?

Four hours later and adoring flatmates still not home, it started to become clear that while I had not died yet, I had also not done any work. Furthermore, the fever seemed to have miraculously cured by taking my jumper off. Whether “acute hypochondria and severe idiocy” is enough to earn a girl an extenuating circumstance form, we shall see. I did bad. But it, like, totally wasn’t my fault.

In which SuBo and I are doing fine solo, thanks.

Printed 30/04/09.

Lauren’s least favourite things about summer: white linen trousers. Sand in suncream. The sticky trail of Calippo juice running down one’s arm and pooling in one’s elbow crease. Sweat (my own, other people’s). Entire days of television programming given over to sporting events. And couples.

Couples, if you hadn’t noticed, are suddenly everywhere. If you hadn’t noticed, it will be because you’re in a couple, and too busy nuzzling each other on the bus while I wretch. Couples, like hayfever and a new Big Brother series, are one of those unpleasant side effects of summer that everyone forgets about each year until it quietly takes over the world.

It’s panic-dating – the sun is out! Quick, grab the nearest, vaguely eligible target with which to publicly canoodle! The early birds will stake out claim on every park, grass verge and floral-mounted roundabout while the couple-come-latelies (the ones who had visa issues or previous marriages to wrap up before the frolicking could begin) will have to content themselves with tube platforms, supermarket checkouts, Starbucks queues or anywhere else inappropriate and far too near my face.

Obviously it isn’t love itself, in all its glorious and indefinable splendour, that I object to. Love is fine. Love is very nice, I’m sure. I fully accept that while I still can’t commit to a 4-pack of tinned tomatoes (“what if I don’t NEED 4 tins? What if, 2 tins in, I suddenly start hating tinned tomatoes?”), other people can devote their whole lives to the mutual support and adoration of each other.

What I object to is when they’re mutually supporting and adoring each other while they should be functioning as proper members of society. Such as, and this may just be because I’ve never seen The Notebook and am therefore only half a woman, but why the incessant hand-holding? There are 80 people charging down Tottenham Court Road towards you, can you not see the potential issues? Is the plan really to snare unsuspecting single pedestrians into your web of pavement passion? Because I’m telling you, the next couple whose conjoined arms I ricochet off like a shuttlecock will either break hands temporarily, or have them politely broken for good.

If I’m seeming a little more bitter than usual this week, it’s because I am. Not just because of the number of entwined couples I’ve had to step over in order to go about my business this week (seriously folks, what can you POSSIBLY find sexy about the Post Office? Is it the smell of dust, adhesive labels and despair?). No, it’s also because the plight of the singleton has taken an unprecedented knock-back over the last couple of weeks, in the matronly shape of Susan Boyle.

I know, I know, how dare I? Because if we Brits love anything more than mocking life’s unfortunates, it’s pretending to love life’s unfortunates as a compassionate cover for actually mocking them. It’s a cruel, cruel practice, and I believe it’s only fair now that everyone who’s declared Susan a ‘legend’, ‘inspiration’ or actually had the audacity to cry is now browbeaten* into buying every album she releases until Leona Lewis looks like a shoddy precursor. That’s what I think.

But while Susan herself is meekly doing her bit for the case of uncoupled women it’s the newspapers that have let the side down. They’ve been using that heinous word – the word that should have been eradicated years ago, but somehow has lingered on like the ghost of antifeminism past: ‘Spinster’. Uggggh. How have we made it to the 21st century still using a word like spinster? Men get ‘bachelor’, with all its pleasant connotations of Cuppa-soup, while women get verbally locked away in attics to weave blankets and grow large facial warts. Susan Boyle, thank you journalists, is not a spinster. She is a lady. A lady who dreamed a dream. And, just maybe, that dream is to be able to get a latte or post a parcel without tripping over a snogging couple. Let’s respect that.


*’Brow’ being the operative word there, Susan’s own pair providing subtle endorsement of the new Budget this week in their tribute to our own Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In which there is nearly a murder in the library.

Printed 22/04/09.

If Emily Post were still writing today, I’d want her to write a guide to Modern Library Etiquette. It’s an issue that needs addressing.

The library, you’d think, would be one of the last refuges of politeness left in the world – they’re nice, quiet places for people who wear comfortable shoes and say ‘ruddy’, are they not? During my three years as a local library assistant, the most scandalous behaviour I encountered was somebody tearing the crossword out of Country Life magazine. To this day, Goring residents probably still tremble at the legend of the mystery Library Ripper.

But everything changes once you move into the realms of the academic library. And of course I mean ‘move into’ literally, this being exam season and my finals hovering overhead like the Grim Reaper in a Shakespearean ruff. We know the property market’s current state is a gift for first time buyers – but while the articles are full of one-bed flats in Bromley for £200 000, nobody’s hit on the rent-free housing solution that is a desk, chair and 24-hour access to all the feminist Virgina Woolf criticism one could ever wish to read. Desk living might not be for everyone, but for many beleaguered undergraduates it is proving the minimalist lifestyle of choice.

Personally preferring a more embellished style of surroundings, I have furnished my desk with some special touches. Firstly, a decorative cross-stitched picture bearing the words “2:1 or not 2:1, that is the question” for motivational purposes. A stuffed shrew on a plinth, to remind myself what nature looks like (and that things could always be worse). Pro-plus tablets are the smarter choice than coffee, entailing neither the need to leave your desk nor the mild laxative effects of three double lattes - though the truly savvy student just injects the caffeine directly into their eyeballs to save time.

A blanket and small air conditioning unit are both musts, for all seasoned desk-dwellers know that libraries are capable only of being furnaces or fridges, nothing in between. A well-stocked supply of Kleenex adds a homey, rustic charm, and after use can double up as missiles to throw at anyone deserving.

Anyone deserving = People who look too calm. People who look too stressed. People who feel the need to do a great humphing sigh with every page they turn. People whose sole aim in life is to let the world know just how much work they’ve done through the means of minute-by-minute facebook status updates. People who chew loudly. People who glare at you when you chew loudly.

People who clearly hire someone, maybe the butler, to turn up at the crack of dawn, claim the best desk by throwing their stuff all over it, then disappear until four in the afternoon while other people have to work sitting in the stairwell (who said Germans and sun loungers? Not me…). People who say anything, ANYTHING, about the recession meaning that degree or no degree, we’re all going to be working in jobs requiring hairnets.

So the library is a minefield of potential etiquette issues, albeit in part because when your sole activity all day is trying to work out who dies in Coriolanus, noticing etiquette issues is as alluring a distraction as you could wish. Yesterday I sat for a full 40 minutes listening to a one-man snot factory on the other side of my little desk partition, giving a full rendition of the Blue Danube with the sinus orchestra. And it took me 40 minutes to debate whether giving him a tissue would be a) a highly offensive gaffe, clearly saying “shut up, you disgusting mucus machine. Why can’t your antibodies work as hard as you are?” or b) a kindly, generous act of human solidarity, perhaps leading me forever to be thought of as some kind of library angel.

In the end I plumped for b), and felt good to have restored peace to library land for a little while. Unfortunately though, without the tissue I had nothing to throw at all the deserving targets, so I had to release the tension by doing the Country Life crossword.

In which worthing just can't be a good sport.

Printed 08/04/09.

I like it when Worthing makes the national news. It helps a little in the blank-faced response arena if you can add “…where all that wood washed up that time” and get a glimmer of recognition.

Indeed, I’ve spent most of my life accumulating little Worthing factoids, to help me out during those moments of obscure-town showdown that arise on dull social occasions. When you’re talking to someone from, say, Burnley, or Telford, or somewhere equally drab, with their “yar, we have the largest rectangular, cobbled, 18th century market square in the whole of the North Lancashire region”, it’s always nice to be able to come back with: BOOM – “Billy Idol was born there”, and POW - “Harry Hill once worked in our hospital”, and if things get a bit more highbrow, KABLAM – “Oscar Wilde wrote the Importance of Being Earnest… somewhere near the Aquarena.”

Yes, I like having Worthing in the news. We made it a few weeks back for the sandwich and biscuit cutbacks at council meetings, and that was nice – we’re trailblazers in solving the economic crisis; we will do without custard creams if it means everyone gets to keep their houses. But last week, oh dear – the people of Worthing are unsportsmanlike! Towards children! While the old adage of all press being good press is particularly apt when the sole aim is not having to lie and say “Brighton” at parties, one can’t help feeling that hitting the nationals with our sore loser parents isn’t exactly kudos for the town. Not for the town that birthed Nicolette Sherridan of Desperate Housewives fame, oh no. It’s a low stoop.

Of course it is, also, hilarious. When your flatmate calls you to say that the Daily Mail is reporting, in all seriousness, the Middle School parents who booed at Thomas A Becket’s inter-school sports day victory, you have to say – well, first you say “what are you doing with a Daily Mail? Put it down before someone sees you.” – but then you have to say “Tsk Worthing. Would Littlehampton behave like that?”

That’s what you have to say. You have to say “Rah, disgraceful, poor kiddywinks, setting an example, rah rah jolly bad show” and words to that effect. But, and here’s my spoonful of controversy for the week, that’s not what you actually want to say.

What I want to say is this: sports days suck. They are the blight of the school calendar.

They are torturous affairs for almost everybody except the eight per cent of kids who can actually run like the wind, sting like a bee etc, and who feel all smug about doing it. For the rest of the world, the fat, asthmatic, clumsy, nobbly-kneed rest of the world, they are long, hot, uncomfortable and embarrassing. Nobody likes wearing polyester shorts in public, even twelve year olds, and wearing them while trying to balance a bean bag on your head because you weren’t athletic enough to do the proper events? That’s enough to put you off exercise and onto Kit Kat Chunkys for the rest of your years.

Now think of the parents. You have had to take an afternoon off from your properly air conditioned office to sit on a tiny plastic chair and watch a hundred small people in identical outfits, who at this distance and without your reading glasses may or may not be your offspring, and you must look enthusiastic while you do it. You are dehydrated, bore, and must use all the energy you’re not expending on applause trying to avoid the head of the PTA in case she tries to make you be in charge of something.

Then at the end of it all, the only moment of vague excitement, and instead of your child’s own school, they announce that one that always wins. More crucially, that one whose catchment area you tried for years to move into, but had to give up because your husband wanted a games room. Yes, it’s wrong to resort to the churlish pantomime response of actually booing… but I think we should make some effort to understand what the parents go through at these things.

Thomas A Becket. don’t need to worry, they can rise above it and carry on being great. But I’ll openly admit, their sporting prowess did (please don’t throw a javelin at me) used to grate on me too. And here’s the twist: I went to Thomas A Becket.

I was the one with the bean bag on her head.

In which I am no twit.

Printed 02/04/09.

I like to test myself.

I consider it a small, tenuous contribution to the progress of humankind to see how long I can last without things. How long can I last without peanut butter? Without sarcasm? Without having a wee, because the toilet’s all the way downstairs and also quite cold? We’ve gone three months without fixing the oven handle, six months without taping the banisters back together, and a fraught month and a half without paying the water bill (thankfully we can also go pretty long without washing).

But over the last few months, my toughest and most impressive exercises in willpower have been a) putting off joining Twitter and b) putting off writing about joining Twitter. It would seem I’ve failed on b) first, which is almost certainly the wrong order of things, and means you’re about to get a big pile of badly-informed guesswork, instead of a properly researched article. And, damnit, it’s going to be more than 140 characters long.

As far as I can discern, the main attractions for joining Twitter are, in order:

• Stalking Stephen Fry’s every move.
• Laughing at Stephen Fry’s immense wit.
• Knowing when Stephen Fry has walked through a park.
• It’s so much less futile and time-consuming than Facebook, thus better.
• It helps you make more fabricated friendships to then embellish. On Facebook.
  

Not since One Night in Paris has a celebrity lent so much endorsement to the internet.

Of course, being a healthy member of the human race, I love Stephen Fry. I would marry him tomorrow, were the opportunity to arise, and happily spend the rest of my days in a chaste union of minds, wearing smoking jackets, eating crumpets by a fireplace, and chortling over P.G. Wodehouse. Of course I would. Definitely.

But while a daily delivered sentence from Stephen may well bring joy, and use of the word ‘widdle’, into my life in glorious abundance, I can’t help feeling there should be more to it. Though supposedly, that’s the point, as I’m told once a day by smug Twitterers that the beauty of the whole operation is its minimalism. Each “Tweet” (and wish I were making that up) is only a sentence or so long, because that is how long really, really interesting people should need to convince the rest of the world they’re sufficiently interesting.

But most people are not really, really interesting, are they now? Come on chaps, we KNOW this. We’ve spent three years reading that the bulk of our 200 nearest and dearest are “tired and going to bed lolz” or “omg drunnnnnkkkkkkk”. We’ve learnt that while our friends prove their worth in other areas, cooking lasagne or fixing our laptops or telling us we have nice hair, they’re generally not wizards with the English language. For the most part, they eat average meals, sit in average pubs, spell it “definately” and overuse exclamation marks. They are not Stephen Fry.

It’s still a battle though. Because the truth, no matter how much I try to masquerade it with miniskirts and accidental spills over my keyboard, is that I am a technology geek. I spend longer in the morning doing the internet necessaries – email, other email, Facebook, eBay, msn, Hypemachine, Facebook again in case it changed – than I do on my makeup (though of course, when you can do your liquid eyeliner with one hand and de-tag a bad photo with the other, you know you know you’ve achieved ultimate modern womanhood). To borrow a quote from Fry, “If I added up all the hours I've sat watching a progress bar fill up, I could live another life.”

Ultimately, while I know that my friends are not gripping wordsmiths, and that I am not nearly interesting enough to bother Obama with details of my lunch, I also know that resistance is futile. I shall join, I shall get addicted, I shall feel a warm fuzzy feeling every time I know Mr Fry is eating a pasty. Because it is the natural order of things. But if my Tweet is ever about finally paying a water bill, I give Stephen full permission to delete me.

In which the back of my head finds internet fame.

Printed 27/03/09.

It’s a level of celebrity so up-to-the-minute I didn’t realise it existed until I accidentally achieved it. What’s even better is that I didn’t need to put the slightest ounce of effort into my climb to fame. Don’t be jealous, ladies and gentlemen, we can’t all be chosen. Some must work hard to get noticed, while some stumble across the limelight without even needing to try… all I had to do was stand on my doorstep, something I’ve been doing with little skill or panache for nigh on two years now. But the camera tracked me down, and now my doorstep-standing technique has been immortalised for all to see in the landscape of London. Yes folks, I am on Google Maps.

Of course the reaction has been enormous – screaming phone calls, hysterical mother, mysterious messages asking “what was in the carrier bag?” – but I won’t let it go to my head. Or the back of my head, as so strikingly featured in the aforementioned photo. After all, nothing brings you back down to earth quicker than realising exactly how the rest of the world sees you. From behind.

And speaking of behinds (mine looks massive but my legs quite skinny, so on balance I probably won’t sue), Google may think they have theirs covered by blurring out everybody’s faces, but this is clearly naive. And something of an insult to the nation’s individuality, and accessorising ability. You’d have to be the dullest of dulloid dressers not to be recognisable to somebody – your own wife, say, going, “By Jove I know that elbow patch!” as you’re walking out of Sauna and Massage, Finsbury Park. Because people know you by your clothes, don’t they? They know you by your hair, by your stance, by that promotional bag you got free at a conference that you insist on using as a briefcase. People will know you by the M&S sandwich you’re consuming.

My flatmate can even identify my footsteps as they walk down the street outside - but I’m inclined to think that’s an extreme brought on by three years of living in each other’s pockets and not really liking many other people. Still, it’s touching.

I’m just thankful the paparazzi mapmakers didn’t catch me doing anything incriminating. Like, not recycling a clearly recyclable carton. Kicking a pigeon. Or a child. Because I’ve discovered that my brand of neon highlighter-pen lightbulb custard lemon-meringue-pie-filling bleached blonde hair is more distinctive than most. “I knew it was you, I knew by the hair!”, they’ve been shrieking. “Really? Not by, maybe, the fact that I’m standing on my own doorstep? Being, quite clearly, me?”. Nope, the hair every time.

What are the chances though? I'm not just using an old cliché, I'd actually quite like to know the statistical probability of being snapped-and-mapped during my 15-second doorstep key search as opposed to all the places I actually spend time.

If Google Maps was to be really representative of the capital's population, I reckon I should have been doing a mad pavement dance behind a particularly slow pensioner. Or methodically turning a copy of Metro into a little paper hat. Or in Boots, Tottenham Court Road, deciding between 500 extra advantage points for a mascara I don't want, or 'buy one get one half price' for two mascaras I don't want.

But no, doorstep. What does it say about me? That I'm a homey person, queen of my castle, happy to be the face (or bottom in this case) of my local community? That my roots need doing and so do the windowboxes?

Or – my plastic carrier bag and laddered tights crucially guarding against the crime fears sparked by the streetmap's unveiling – that I'm clearly a student and, therefore, have nothing worth nicking?

In which the sun is out, the sky is blue, there're no exams to spoil out view.

Printed 19/03/09.

Preferring not to limit myself to the confines of a normal calendar, I like to time my revision period by the sun. It makes me feel at one with the natural world, and the instincts of early man in a time before clocks and dates dictated our every action, or something. So I don’t start my revision until the weather tells me to. Some might call it being lazy – I call it being attuned to the needs of one’s own life cycle. And lazy.

So here it is: third year, six exams, final ever stab at academia. Until now, nature didn’t want me to start revising. It wanted me to eat pie by a fire in a pub, read the Guardian supplements and fall asleep wearing massive socks, and I obeyed. But this weekend, clear as day, there was the call (actually, the call IS a clear day…so the metaphor falls down a bit). Sunshine, general good cheer, the sudden urge to eat many, many Calippos — all the primary signs have appeared. It is time.

First comes the sun: that means I must begin contemplating the savage schedule of study that lies before me.

Then come the men in shorts: By the sighting of the first white, hairy knees, I must have gone to WH Smith, purchased notecards and highlighter pens, and taken them out of their packets.

Next is the sinister tinkle of the ice cream van, the siren that says "Make a revision timetable! Then hurl it in fury at a wall when it won't allow you time to watch America's Next Top Model."

Then, finally, the dermatological oracle, the clearest call of all: sunburn. Like a big red flag to happiness, sunburn means serious, serious work time. No pausing to peel.

Of course, it's generally accepted that whoever set the first summertime exams was an embittered, sadistic hater of humanity (it was probably the Greeks — if QI has taught me anything, and it really has taught me everything, then it's that the Greeks were responsible for more or less everything modern, except shrink-to-fit jeans). Exams don't test our intellectual prowess, they test our superhuman ability to ignore the words "water fight", "white chocolate Magnum", "attractive topless men playing frisbee on lawn" and "Is elevenses too early for a nice cold beer?".

They challenge us to dismiss, with a smug wave of a textbook, all the noble and sacred traditions of the British summer. They're like tearing down the bunting and wiping the sunblock off the vicar's nose. They're wrong.

And, naturally, we all have our optimistic fits of believing we can combine the two. But show me a person who's ever got a shred of work done at a communal barbecue in the park… and I'll show you what is actually a shred of coleslaw. Stuck to a massive empty page.

Ask any of my schoolfriends what Lord of the Flies is about, and the response will be "rolling up our blouses to minimise tan lines". Ditto fractional distillisation, the Treaty of Versailles and Pythagorus' theorem (when one tan line was equal to the sum of the two opposing tan lines).

Which was all very well and good at GCSE, where a friendly relationship with Sparknotes.com was enough to ride a wave of A*s right into college, but now it's a degree. A DEGREE. Even the word itself is terrifying — third degree burns, first degree murder, Bananarama's 1987 hit Love in the First Degree. Only bad things can come of it.

And, of course, there's the unshakeable weather relation, as perceptively foreshadowed by my friend Liz in the year 10 maths lesson where she asked "a 90 degree angle — is that centigrade or Fahrenheit?"

Now, because I've just seen a whole army of hairy white knees march past my basement window, it's time to leave you and answer the call of nature… after which I'll do some revision. Promise.

*Anyone thinking "unless you fail" gets a swift flick on the forehead with a 30cm ruler.

In which I say 'come, bring me your nostalgic masses'.

Printed 11/03/09.

Nostalgia. One of our society’s most popular and widely-practised mutual hobbies, alongside ritual celebrity persecution, queuing, and finding new and exciting places to insert the phrase “at the end of the day.” Nostalgia is a big business. It unites the masses, healing breaches and drawing us closer together as human beings by reminding us to focus on our similarities, not our differences. Who can remember conflicts in culture, creed or colour when you’re reminiscing about the sherbet Dib-Dab?

We’ve compiled endless TV homages to all that has past in the fields of pop music, telly, adverts on telly, people on telly and discontinued snackfoods. There are whole friendships out there built entirely on taking it in weekly turns to say, “OMG remember Fun House?? Lolz.”, then singing the Round the Twist theme tune in four-part harmony. Once upon a time people went to parties armed with witty chat and views on current affairs – now all we need is a battalion of references to tamagotchis, Neil Buchanan and Lucky Charms cereal*.

Naturally the reasoning behind it is: past = warm and fuzzy, future = hard, cold and scary. The past is nice because we’ve already done it, which is less effort than the future, where there is stuff still to do. So it stands to reason that during this period of stressful change and disarming uncertainty (that’s my finals, not the economy), we are retreating into memories of happier times like woodland creatures hibernating in winter.

This weekend we went back to our student roots. Something in us is clearly crying out for the hopefulness of first year, or £1.50 pints in a room that smells of Dettol and peanuts, because finding ourselves at a loose end in Camden Town on a Saturday night we could think of nowhere we’d rather go than our first-year halls bar. Genuinely nowhere.

Nothing would give us more pleasure than to spend an evening crying “The Tesco! The Tesco’s still here!” and “They’ve changed the hand driers in the toilets, the wily sods!”, and “Pff, it wasn’t £2.40 in our day!… Actually, how much was it, Ian?… £2.35! See, see?”. It’s testament to our third-year insecurities that we procured real gratification from invading a room of freshers, taking the best sofas and then telling long irrelevant anecdotes about things that happened around the sofas way back when.

And we couldn’t leave it at the bar, no. We continued the adventure by breaking into our old building to examine what had happened to the kitchen cupboards (for “breaking in”, read “found door open”). Unsurprisingly, nothing had happened to the kitchen cupboards because a) nothing much can ever really happen to kitchen cupboards, save mouse inhabitants or damp, and b) unbeknownst to most, our halls of residence is in a government-sponsored protection scheme to preserve the authentic décor of the mid-1970s, ‘Formica4Future’.

The laundry room was the same – rumbling noise of apocalypse, bleak looking boy on phone to mother holding up candy-pink tennis shorts. The TV room was the same – mismatched chairs stolen from a nearby church hall, telly in a fake wood cabinet, bleak looking boy watching Top Gear under a duvet. And the table tennis room was the same, minus a table tennis table – the presence of which, after debate, we concluded we had probably just hallucinated anyway.

The voiceover lady in the lift was the same (also featured as the lift lady on Holby City), and the vending machine was still stocking the very same muffins and UHT milk (the very same, I recognised the markings). So, wrapped up in the warm fuzzy blanket of the past, we foraged the well-trod corridors in search of the ghosts of our first-year selves. Sadly, we didn’t find them there. It was Saturday night, you see, and they’d all gone out.

*A word of advice to parents here – let your children watch mindless TV, let them eat sugar-packed neon goo, let them spend their pocket money on flimsy tat from Argos. They’re setting themselves up for a future of social success.

In which I've, like, totally seen Bladerunner.

Printed 06/03/09.

Hands up who has ever done the following: you are at a party or some form of social gathering (hands down, that wasn’t it). You stray for a moment from the snack table and find yourself embroiled in a spot of light conversation. The chat is bouncing merrily along the usual topics – traffic, weather, Cheryl Cole, amusing local tramps, food poisoning one-upmanship – when suddenly, out of nowhere, comes a film reference.

“Yar, well,” chortles Unspecific Partygoer A, “It was a complete Withnail and I situation.” Everyone laughs heartily. You laugh heartily too. Then Unspecific Partygoer B will bellow “We want the finest wines available to humanity”, and everyone will laugh heartily some more. You laugh heartily some more too. Then you think, hang on, do I know why this is funny? Have I ever actually seen Withnail and I? Or have I in fact watched 10 minutes of it one Boxing Day before falling asleep on the sofa, then believed ever after I had absorbed its essence by osmosis?

Of course, it doesn’t matter. Because 30 seconds later they’ve moved on to talking about the time someone was sick in a postbox, and you’ve escaped undetected. Until, that is, someone else makes a reference to The Breakfast Club and you have to start the whole rigmarole again.

So, we’re liars – ‘film bluffs’ I might say to be hilarious. But, like eating food off the floor or stealing bank pens, it’s ok because we all do it. I fully believe faking your cultural knowledge is the new faking your tan. Or nails/eyelashes/wood flooring. A laugh here, an “oh, totally…” there, is all you really need to pretend you’ve seen those ‘ones to watch before you die’ movies, and we know that this is because the other person hasn’t actually seen it either.

Indeed a quick straw poll round the pub table this afternoon revealed that my friends, whom I consider well-informed and richly cultured people, have actually seen hardly any films at all ever. So, as my gift to you all and because I’m just faking having something to write a column about, here’s my Bluffer’s Guide to Film Fakery:

- A Clockwork Orange: Violence, controversy, more violence and a nod to Twiggy in the eye make-up, this has to be one of the ultimate Never Seen movies. But that doesn’t stop it being the trendy idiot’s Halloween costume of choice.

- Brief Encounter: Set in the black and white days, people have endless cups of tea at railway stations, fall madly in love, but never do anything about it because their stiff upper lips make kissing too uncomfortable.

- The Matrix: In the future, we will all have to wear grossly unflattering black PVC catsuits. The Jetsons lied.

- The Life of Brian: “He’s not the Messiah… [complete]. This gem is the stalwart of the film bluff’s canon.

- 2001 A Space Odyssey: Boom… boom…BA BOOM. If you can talk about the seminal moment in cinema where an ape throws a bone that becomes a space ship in the air, you’ve reached advanced level fakery.

- Memento: Whole film backwards. Presumably if you’d watched it at the beginning you hadn’t anymore by the end, so a fruitless endeavour all round.

- Fatal Attraction: Rabbit stew, anybody?

- It’s a Wonderful Life: Does what it says on the can – but not until the end of a couple of hour’s worth of misery. At least you’ve got that leftover trifle.

- Psycho: Should have stayed in a Premier Inn.

- Citizen Kane: Details are irrelevant because nobody in the world has seen it, but you do need to know this – it’s probably the best film ever. This illusion would, of course, be ruined if anyone did watch it, so it’s best to just nod knowingly and mutter “masterpiece”. Same goes for The Third Man, which may or may not be the same film (we’re still checking).

- Withnail and I: Famed for its associated drinking game, in which you have a drink every time they do. So naturally nobody’s seen more than the first 15 minutes, having been passed out on a rug for the rest of the film.

Now go forth, film bluffs, and live fraudulently ever after. And there’s a prize on offer to anyone who can tell me which of the above I really have seen – by this point I’ve forgotten myself.

In which we go to fashion week. No shit.

Printed 25/02/09.

I blame Sex and the City. I blame it for an awful lot of the modern woman’s more undesirable traits. I blame it for worming the phrase “I couldn’t help but wonder” into our internal dialogue where before we just had “um”. I blame it for my £7-a-pop cocktail habit (you never see Carrie and co with four straws in a Wetherspoons pitcher). Likewise I blame it for making lunching out the new stalwart of female friendships. We are women! We must LUNCH! Boots meal deal in the office car park, anyone? Quick, say something witty through a mouthful of lettuce!

I blame it for spawning the concept of “He’s Just Not That Into You” and shattering many years of carefully-built dating illusion, then in turn spawning the movie of the same name, shattering many decades of feminist progress and causing me to eat a whole supersize bag of Revels just to return some mystery to life. Turns out men aren’t actually coded, emotionally-complex beings, they just don’t like us very much – but this one could be a coffee cream or a Malteser, and that nugget of suspense and excitement will have to be enough.

This week, mainly, I am blaming Sex and the City for making me think I can run in heels. Before Carrie, heels were debilitating but imbued with gravitas. They had their own rules, their own codes of conduct. Catch that train? Climb that hill? Help you move a sofa? Can’t, I’m in heels. Today, I walk tall, walk proud, and must sit down at regular intervals to go “ahhh”. This is the way it must be, because I’ve chosen to elevate myself on small personal platforms and thus require special treatment.

But then SJP began her Manolo marathon, and women everywhere put down their bunion relief cream to watch in awe. Not quite a skip, not a jog, nothing like that run mums do that manages to look vastly strenuous without going any faster than walking, Carrie’s heels run was a new dawn in modern movement. It was nimble, agile, yet reassuringly surefooted. There was a little ankle-crossing motion, a slight left-veering gait, and a crucial air of always being a bit late to something fabulous, because the previous fabulous thing over-ran. It was beautiful, but more importantly, it was completely unachievable for an actual real woman.

Have you ever seen a real woman walk down stairs in four-inch heels? It’s like watching a maimed antelope trying to perform in a Broadway show. There are two options, to take each step sideways as though on a Morcambe and Wise Christmas special (high kicks and jazz hands optional), or face-on in a bow-legged stagger, skirt hoiked up and knees trying to escape in opposite directions. Had we seen Carrie and co stumbling down Fifth Avenue in antelope mode, kebab in one hand and dignity in the other, it would have saved womankind six years of unrealistic mobility expectations and we could have all stuck to flats.

My reason for this ambling pre-amble is that this week, possibly the most Sex and the City-esque opportunity of my life presented itself. I got to go to Fashion Week. Not just to peer through the railings and try to touch Emma Watson, no siree – I had an actual ticket to an actual show with an actual seat and everything. I was giddy. As Flatmate and I set off 20 minutes late on our way to South Kensington, it was important we summoned up our very best heels run for the occasion.

Handbags to the wind, we managed to make Archway our very own Manhattan as we Carrie-ered down the pavement on our platforms. We were nimble, agile yet reassuringly surefooted. We exuded the crucial air of being a bit late to something fabulous. Then I trod in dog shit.

And as I sat through my first London Fashion Week scraping excrement off my heel, I couldn’t help but wonder – are we trying to run before we can walk? And does Sarah Jessica Parker realise how much she has to answer for?

In which there is a man about the house.

Printed 18/02/09.

Today, a man has moved into the house. It’s only barely discernable, but I’m definitely picking up the new pheromone ratio in the atmosphere, and it’s making me slightly edgy.

(Incidentally, I believe it’s a skill unique in Worthing to those who went to Davison High, to be able to sense ‘boy’ within 10 seconds at a 50m radius. Naturally it helps if the male in question, as our few boy associates generally were in those days, are liberally doused in a Lynx body spray called Angst, but I maintain this is an ability that goes beyond mere smell. The caretaker’s son, sports centre assistants, travelling actors come to do workshops on road safety – all were victims of our boydar, subjected to hours of slavish following around corridors and, more often than not, tributes in the form of song.)

It shouldn’t be a daunting prospect – we lived with Pete for two whole years, and as far as I can tell neither party suffered any lasting damage. On the contrary we like to think it made him a better, more attentive, well-informed member of the male population, tuned into such delicate nuances as pore size, chunky days, and when to hazard a comment on a new haircut. Meanwhile we awakened our maternal instincts and began to understand why half-pint cans of Heineken aren’t the sensible moderate solution they might seem, but actually a slight on one’s masculinity. Yes, overall we did mixed-gender living very well.

So on advertising for new housemates, we’ve always been keen to stress the point that despite being four girls, we are not girly. We don’t require midnight spider-removal. We don’t get squeamish about pulling hair out of the plughole (last week’s excavation amounting in a fairly accurate model of Cousin It from the Addams Family). We don’t have PMT that casts a black cloud of doom over the local area for a week, striking down with lady lightning anyone that happens to glance accidentally in the direction of our thighs. And, just to do my bit to debunk a persistent myth of man-driven media, we have never, ever, had pillow fights in our pants.

But in the end, girls moved in. Then one moved out, and another girl moved in. Then another. And in that time, just a short six months, the creeping influence of femininity seems to have worked its way over the house without us noticing. It started small, with floral crockery, fruit in the fruitbowl, air freshener in the loo instead of matches, that sort of thing. Then came the fresh flowers on the table, the village-fete bunting strung up in the kitchen, the sudden and alarming multiplying of cushions in the lounge that nobody but the hamster ever even goes in.

We started buying moisturising handwash instead of using Fairy Liquid, and had sudden urges to drape fabric over objects that don’t require fabric draping to function at their full capacity. It was the evening we spent doing decoupage on the hall table with pictures of flowers and Victorian children that I realised what we had become. We were proper, womeny women. My main fear became that soon, if we turned off the Best of Girls Aloud and stopped crocheting doilies for a second, we might be able to make out the very faint, distant ticking of four biological clocks.

But it’s all going to be ok, now we have a bloke around again. I’m hoping it will curb our girly behaviour before we reach the point of no return and have to buy a cat to dress up in bonnets. We’re going to have to modify the habits that have been allowed to flourish, unchecked by the outward influence of a scornful man.

No longer will we be able to sing Total Eclipse of the Heart into bottles of Babycham as an acceptable Friday night activity. We won’t be able to stage impromptu competitions over whose tights come up the highest, or whose legs without shaving can most quickly enter a state of official yetidom as necessary insulation for the winter.

Of course, this might seem like a lot of sacrifice, but in return we’ll be gaining new power of our own – for any time we need to exercise authority, maybe get the washing up done or scare him into a state of cowardly subservience, we need only utter the magic word. “Periods”.

In which love is a many splendid thing.

Printed 12/02/09.

You may not realise this, but last week's column was a remarkable feat of restraint.

Do you know how hard it is to NOT write about snow?

Very, that's the answer. When there is snow to be written about, it is very hard not to write about snow.

But in the noble name of not being a cliché, I withheld.

After all, if you wanted to read a load of predictable snowy enthusiasm coupled with lavish use of the exclamation mark, you will have just looked at facebook (for anyone really curious as to what they missed, the whole article would have consisted of the word SNOW! in five-inch high letters, with a footnote reading "Lauren Bravo has gone to steal a sledge off a six-year-old").

So this week, once again, I'll refrain from the following: a) remarking on how ridiculous we are that we can't get a few trains to run when the Russians and the Canadians and the Eskimos put up with actual snow all the ruddy time, b) following that with, "but actually we all know the government are incompetent on purpose because they know we all love a good day off, Rah for Britain!", c) bemoaning a lack of suitable footwear for snowy shenanigans, d) using the words "adverse", "thermal" or "since records began".

And because, for your sakes, I'm exercising such a lot of self-control, I'm afraid I'll have to revert to another columnist cliché.

Ready for it? Guessed it already? Smelt the chemically-developed waft of chocolate, roses and love wafting off the specially-impregnated page?

Valentine's Day, folks. Shall we all shudder together, and throw a pillow at something happy? Feels better, doesn't it?

To affectionately plagarise the original queen of the romcom, Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Men hate Valentine's Day when they're in a relationship, and Women hate Valentine's Day when they're not.

Anyone with a simple grasp of logic will grasp, therefore, that this adds up to a worldwide gender imbalance in which no couple can be happy, single women everywhere must eat Sara Lee gateau under a duvet, and nobody wins. In the fairground of the calendar year, Valentine's Day is the waltzer – garish, nausea-inducing, yet managing to look like everyone on it is having the time of their lives.

I'm not asking for pity, though. Now that more and more people are boarding the cynicism wagon (terminates at Bitterville via Bridget Jones junction), there's no shortage of anti-valentines events to go and be single at. The best one I've spotted is a Guilty Pleasures night at Brick Lane bowling alley – presumably a chance for us all to regress to primary school age (and a time before love meant more than shared Pick-n-mix), drink Panda Pops, play British Bulldog and slowdance to Shania Twain with whoever looks least sweaty.

No, the singletons aren't the ones I'll be feeling sorry for on Saturday. We get to go out, scream "I have no love, I MUST HAVE THINGS!" and throw a month's rent at Topshop.

The people I'll be feeling sorry for are the people unwrapping any of the following: a teddy. A heart-shaped pillow. A teddy holding a heart-shaped pillow reading "I wuv you". A plaque inscribed with a fake declaration from an unspecified authority, claiming you are the World's Best/Foxiest/Least likely to get dumped for a promo girl Girlfriend/Boyfriend/Spouse/Fertility Donor. Likewise underwear made of candy. Or underwear made of rash-inducing Primark polyester. Or underwear with anything, anything at all, written on it in glitter. A signet ring with his initials on it (presumably so that the imprint on his jaw reminds him who he is when he finally comes round). Anything you know came free with the weekend paper. Did I mention a teddy?

I assume that right now, up and down the country, thousands of happy other halves are practising their grateful grimaces in preparation for the big unveil. While the miserable other halves slump with their faces pressed against the wall outside Clintons, wondering if unconditional love is really worth getting 'Babez' inscribed on a diamante iPod case.

Call me a spiteful spinster, but I've always privately thought that if it takes a musical cuddly rabbit for them to tell you they love you… they probably don't.

Still, it's not all gloom – if you're very lucky, there might be more snow next week.

In which I don't pose. Not even once.

Printed 05/02/09.

Remember the time before digital photography? When you’d wait six weeks after returning from Marbella to find out how you really looked in lime green towelling hotpants. When every set of holiday snaps would include three customary “using up the film” shots – Mum degreasing the kitchenette hob, a close up of your brother’s scab, a “leaving shot” of your villa distinguishable from the “arriving shot” only by the vague sense of wistful melancholy and sunburn.

When the double chin, halfway blink and unfortunate nose angle were all accepted hazards of the photographic process – no checking the camera screen repeatedly until you get one that doesn’t make you look like an aged Miss Piggy. Fact is, back then, we were just all so much less attractive. Out of a roll of 30 you would get, say, eight passably good pictures, and 22 in which your face seemed to be trying to escape your head in two different directions at once. And that was just you – try then to find pictures where nobody looks like Bernard Manning or Beaker from The Muppets, nobody is ‘scratching’ their nose in the background and nobody’s finger is half obscuring Auntie Marigold’s wig, and you’re down to maybe two. If you were lucky.

But that was part of the charm. I defy you to tell me you don’t miss the giddy anticipation, of being handed the packet at Supersnaps, quietly hoping that this would be the time, this reel the one that would prompt people to say “My, you know at some angles you really do have something of the Kim Wilde about you.”

Of course as you go through the set to discover slowly that your new coy enigmatic photo face actually has something of the stroke victim about it, giddy anticipation gave way to a small self-esteem complex and need for a triple choc muffin. Yet, like the way mothers forget the pain of birth so that nature can ensure they do it again, so we would forget that halternecks make us look like a tan-lined quarterback, and blithely go through the whole thing again next time someone whips out a Nikon.

No longer. Digital technology has transformed the entire concept of personal photography. Firstly, because now it’s easy, free and immediate, everyone takes ten times the pictures they used to. No social occasion, trip to the pub or slightly funny hair moment goes undocumented and unfacebooked. At my 21st party this weekend, just one of my flatmates personally managed to take 363 photos. As far as I can discern, 345 of those were of people posing for various other cameras, staring into the middle distance and developing RSI from all the pouting effort.

Like the perfect haircut, mascara, bra and cheese-to-pickle sandwich ratio, the perfect photo face is another of those holy grails that women perpetually strive for but know we’ll never quite attain. I myself have been through about 12 variations on the theme of “smile” – close-lipped turning up, close-lipped turning down, open-lipped enigmatic, open-lipped toothy, wide-open surprised, pursed and endearing - the list (and the quest) goes on.

But now that everyone and his budgie is an amateur paparazzo, the main concern has switched from trying to look good in photos, to trying to obliterate every awful one of yourself before it reaches public viewing, while simultaneously framing and shaming each of your nearest and dearest in turn. Among my friends it’s customary to create a distraction before you shove a camera in someone’s face, capturing them with five chins, one eye and a visible filling, before darting away shrieking “no deleting! No deleting!” like a crazed photo-sadist.

So in addition to the real hangover, there is the photo hangover. Standard recovery involves five hours of de-tagging, a strong cup of coffee, and a friend to stroke your hair while saying things like “It’s not your thighs, it’s a trick of the light” and, “who said Vanessa Feltz? Not I” .

And if you’re still feeling awful, whip out the one that makes you best friend look like Mr Potato Head. Or just go back to film.

In which I reach the grand old age of GAAH.

Printed 29/01/09

IN case you hadn't heard the fanfare or seen the sky-writing, I'm 21 today.

Unless you're reading this later in the week, in which case I was 21 on Thursday and haven't received your card yet (or reading this at the dentist, in which case I'm happily married and living in a bungalow in Finchley).

I admit it's risky to admit my age, just in case the Herald powers-that-be realise I've lost my status as young person and oust me for a spritely 15-year-old. But in the spirit of the occasion, I'm going to be reckless today. Heck, I might even have crisps for breakfast. Because I'm realising, as my youth withers away before me like an unattended pot plant, that there were lots of things I always meant to do before I reached 21*.

As a wide-eyed teenager, I thought of 21 as the age of Genuine Actual Adulthood Horror (or GAAH for short). For starters, it's the last birthday before 50 where people buy you really good presents. From 22 onwards, I've been reliably informed, it's nothing but bath salts, book tokens and back pillows.

Worse, I sense I've reached the age where I can no longer blame my incompetence on the giddy innocence of youth. Next time I fix a broken laptop charger with masking tape, which subsequently catches fire and fills my room with noxious glue fumes, I don't think people will think it's an endearing foible. I think they'll think I'm an imbecile.

I thought I would be a better-informed person at 21. I thought that by now, I'd know the difference between a bank and a building society. I thought I'd be able to drink Lemsip without needing a biscuit to take the taste away. I'm ashamed that I still, after five years of going "yeah, must upgrade that" every time it's produced in restaurants, have a Solo card instead of a proper debit card for grown-ups.

And after years of quiet wondering, and the feeling that I really ought to have found out by now, I still don't quite understand what Che Guevara did.

A 21-year-old should know these things.

I should be able to buy a lightbulb without having to call home to check once more whether we're bayonet or screw-in. I should be able to use all the settings on our washing machine as appropriate, instead of always using 40° and just hoping for the best. And I should definitely, definitely have stopped ironing everything with my hair straighteners.

Still, if I'm lacking in some of the fundamentals of successful adulthood, I guess it's a comfort that I'm also avoiding those depressing symptoms designed to keep grown-ups distracted from their mortgages and stress incontinence. In 21 years of happy dress-wearing, the purpose of a slip still evades me. I think I can probably stave off slippers for another 10 years. And I still feel confident that at no time in the near or distant future will I ever feel the pressing desire to purchase an Airwick plug-in.

Perhaps soon I'll hear the call — I'll be strolling past a display of those TV dinner trays with bean bags underneath and instead of shuddering I'll think "My, what a practical solution to a common dining conundrum." Then I can rush off to open and file all my bank statements, register with a dentist and buy a new laptop charger.

Until then, I plan to make 21 the new "it" age – and it's starting with Monster Munch.

* One of them was watering the pot-plant.

In which Winslet should gather, not blather.

Printed 23/01/09

It shouldn’t have been too hard. Considering it’s something we all practice about once a week in the shower, mentally draft during meetings, scribble down during idle moments on the back of napkins in pubs, you wouldn’t think an award acceptance speech would be such an easy thing to balls up.

I accept that there are many challenging areas of a celebrity’s life. It can’t be easy working those long studio hours, then rushing home to check the nanny hasn’t sold all your underwear on eBay. Or thinking up inanimate objects to name your offspring after (those not already purloined by Sarah Palin and family). Avoiding the paparazzi without spilling your Starbucks down your velour tracksuit. Not being accidentally caught in a photo that Heat can later rig up to look like an unfortunate nose-pick. It’s a tough life.

But how hard, really, is a thank-you speech? If Kate Winslet’s buttock-clenching dronefest at the Golden Globes last week was anything to go by, the answer is very.

And it’s surprising because Winslet’s one of the good ones. She can act. She eats cake. She doesn’t do Loreal ads. She never gets out of cars wearing no knickers. And she could definitely take Keira Knightley in a fight. But all of these attributes were swiftly wiped from all memory at the sight of her snivelling tearful thanks to her make-up lady over the podium like an over-caffeinated pageant queen.

Just the crying would have been forgiveable. After all, I’m a cryer. As someone who can’t watch the end of Cool Runnings without bawling like an infant, I am in no position to judge. Tears can actually be fairly humbling, provided you throw in some realistic hiccuping and snot sounds – they say ‘I’m human, I have feelings, and not so much botox that my chin can no longer wobble’. Like Halle and Gwyneth before her, Kate chose crying as the serious actress’s route to credibility, and a possible Kleenex campaign.

But crying AND waffling, that is unforgiveable. Crying, waffling and forgetting Angelina Jolie as she apologised to the losers. Not to mention ordering herself to ‘gather’ several times, like a headmistress announcing lacrosse results to a rowdy fourth form. And, my particular favourite, answering back to the ‘aaaand that’s all for now folks’ music with the words “You have no idea how much I am NOT wrapping up.” All before rounding off with a load of gushing professions of love to Leonardo Di Caprio, before shoe-horning her husband like an afterthought. Smooth.

But how, I know you’re asking, was she meant to do it? Is there really any good way to say "You're right, I am great" to the establishment, without ladelling on the faux humility like custard on a couture pudding?

Here's my plan: don't talk about the honour. Don't talk about the film. Don't thank anyone, don't offer any commiserations, and don't talk through the camera to your kids at home.

Instead, talk about the award.

It's an under-recognised part of the industry and it needs appreciating. I think I'd dedicate a good portion of my speech to the craftsmanship, the long hours put in to carving the elegant jutting pieces that might later skewer Tom Cruise somewhere embarrassing at an after-party. Then I'd compare the award to other, also very impressive, awards around at the time – like TV Quick (unrivalled sheen to the sturdy base) and Inside Soap (looking like an actual bubble of lather). Wonderful work.

So while the Oscar rumours keep on buzzing, let's see if Kate can "gather" herself suitably for another go.

If in doubt love, make the little gold man do a dance for the audience. And when the music starts, wrap up. There's a good girl.