In which it is NOT a euphemism.

To be printed 16/09/10.

In the grand vocabulary of life, there are certain concepts that you have no real grasp of until you reach a certain age. "Fixed rate mortgage", "irritable bowel syndrome" and "making good time" on a car journey are among the ones I thankfully have yet to be initiated in. Ditto making people take their shoes off in your house (It's a FLOOR, what did you think people were going to be doing on it?) and dismissing desserts as "too rich", but there are plenty that I have begun to find myself caring about.

This month's newly-grasped concept is "storage solution". There was a time when it worked the other way round - I bought bits of furniture and attractive boxes and whatnot because I liked them, and then set about acquiring things to put in them. But not now. Now I feel like I'm in a crazed 90s platform game, where I have to run around with a container trying to catch rapidly multiplying accoutrements as they fall from the sky and bury me. It was a defeating moment, on moving day, after I'd decanted everything that I could into my new room's wardrobe and chest of drawers, to stand in a massive heap of tat and realise, like a dunce trying to solve a math's equation, that I had too much stuff and not enough wood to house it.

So I needed storage solutions. A sensible person might have interpreted this as "buy some furniture" - go to Ikea, choose a sturdy receptacle, put things in it. Only in my head did this translate as, "buy a hatbox, an ornamental birdcage and a steamer trunk on eBay".

"Um," said my flatmate, looking at my pile of stuff. "How big is this hatbox?"
"Average hatbox size?"
"So… designed to hold one hat? One."
"Well. Yes, when you put it like that. But I expect it'll be one of those Tardis hatboxes the Victorians were so famed for."
"Tardis hatboxes?"
"Yes."

The trouble with buying quaint antique nik naks as storage solutions is that they didn't just need storage solutions in the olden days. You were either rich, in which case you had plenty of mahogany dressers and roll-top desks to house all of your ming vases and faberge eggs, or you were poor in which case you were terribly chic and minimalist and had one plate, one cup and one pair of good boots, with no ming vases or faberge eggs to speak of. Nobody back then, as far as I can tell, needed eight box files to store all the council tax bills and payslips that they know they're not meant to throw away but aren't sure exactly why.

"What you need," said my Mum, "Is a slut basket." Not, in fact, a euphemism for Chapel Road Wetherspoon's, but the secret weapon of every lazy homemaker. A slut basket is a massive, aesthetically-pleasing basket that you fill with every ugly, awkwardly-shaped thing you own, then put a lid on and pretend it's just decorative. Pandora' box was, I'm pretty sure, actually just the slut basket to end all slut baskets.

And what a revelation it is. I'm a convert. Now my bedroom is more basket than room, but at least I can walk across the floor as nature intended. There's a danger I'm taking the concept a little too far though - I've found myself looking round the rest of the flat and assessing every item as potential basket fodder. Do we really need that there? Would those not be better off In The Basket? In fact,  I'm basically looking a mess myself - would I not be better off in there too, to avoid cluttering up the place?

So I will leave you, with the immortal words: If anybody wants me, I'll be in my slut basket.

In which I hope we've seen the tail end of the WAG.

Printed 09/09/10.

Sigh. Another week, another footballer scandal, another opportunity to score some pun points with the phrase 'playing away'. Of course the surprise lies not in the fact that Wayne Rooney cheated, or even that he found anyone to cheat with (when a friendly green lady ogre is nowhere to be seen, being a multimillionaire is always going to have its uses). But while Coleen proves that her Littlewoods boots range really is made for walking, let us all take heed and hope that this is the beginning of the end for the WAG dream.

It'd be easy, of course, to say that "in my day, little girls wanted to be schoolteachers and nurses and prima ballerinas who visited orphanages on the side". But that's largely bull; I spent most of my formative years wanting to be a professional cheerleader. Actually, an American professional cheerleader. When I was nine I trained myself to hold my fork in my right hand because that was 'what Americans did', and have never quite managed to switch back again.

But still, however flimsy and tinsel-related our dreams may have been, none of us ever planned to make a career purely out of carrying very tiny dogs in very big handbags. I was going to high-kick damn hard for my living, thank you very much. So, just as our mothers before us realised that they could achieve more than taking off their enormous glasses and whipping down their hair to a "Why Miss Jones, you're beautiful!" from a faceless executive, let today's fledgling women learn that being a WAG is probably, all in all, actually quite shit.

My Top 5 Reasons Not To Be A WAG

1) The stupid shoes.

There are heels, there are high heels, and then there's the £400 Louboutin equivalent of those yellow buckets from the Early Learning Centre we used to hold on our feet with string. Just consider all the wonderful, cobbled places that are denied the be-stilted WAGS. You'll never be able to visit the York Shambles in comfort, girls. Think about it.

2)  All that having-to-watch-football

And you never even see them singing the chants, or enjoying the stadium snacks.

3) You must recognise Victoria Beckham as your figurehead, much in the same way the rest of us have the Queen

Sources are as yet unconfirmed as to whether a proportion of each WAG's weekly OK magazine income goes towards keeping Posh in the lifestyle to which she's become accustomed, but I have my suspicions.

4) Having to hold your bag in the crook of your arm.

It aches something chronic, let me tell you. Particularly when you're carrying around the weighty baggage of your unrealised potential alongside the St Tropez top-up wipes.

5) Your husband will inevitably have a dozen tacky affairs, like a massive tedious cliche

And as well as the hurt, betrayal and savage dissolution of a life you built together, you'll have to be photographed coming out of Starbucks wearing a baseball cap. A lot.

In which I proceed to the self-serve warehouse

To be printed 02/09/10.

Things I have learned from moving

1. I don't need any more stuff.

The trouble is, I love stuff. I thrive on things. It's hard to explain, admittedly, why I so badly need to live with a bakelite telephone that doesn't work, a food processor I don't use, some vintage prescription glasses I don't wear or a tailor's dummy that I routinely mistake for a real person in the middle of the night and wake up screaming, but I do. I just do. Sometimes I worry that I measure my life in terms of the sheer volumes of tat I've managed to accumulate. It might be a subconscious desire to perpetuate my memory, so that after I die, there will be vast roomfuls of stuff for my loved ones to sort through for days and days. They can play music, serve snacks; it would be like a big amazing jumble sale where everything's donated by me.

At least, that was how I felt last week. This week, after the heart-, gut- and muscle-wrenching adventure that most call moving house, but I will forever think of as 'Operation Life Dredge', I changed my mind about stuff. I'd like to take this chance to ask: if any of you ever see me buying anything, or even looking like I might be thinking about buying anything, please gently remind me that in three years' time I will be sitting in the middle of the floor, desperately trying to cram said thing into a box, covered in dust, weeping.

2. Start dusting, you slattern.

As Quentin Crisp famously had it, after four years you don't notice the dust. But great though that theory is, it follows the same rule as your hair starting to wash itself if you leave it for three weeks - that is, you will never quite make it long enough to find out if it's true. So after three years of astonishingly slovenly behaviour, my own dust farm had got to the point where it was just easier to move. I'll always wonder how it might have looked if I'd made it that one extra year.


3. There are only so many cheese graters a person needs, and that number is one.

We somehow have three. One is battery powered, one has a special box to catch the gratings and one is a box grater in the traditional style. I plan to spend the next few weeks on an exciting culinary adventure into the logistics of what can and can't be grated. There will be grated toast for breakfast, grated carrot for lunch and grated roast beef and yorkshire pudding for dinner, accompanied by a choice selection of 'graters are great' puns. Until it gets… grating.

4. Ikea hates us all.

You're Swedish and quirky, we get it. We love it. We love that our bookshelf is called Agnetta and our toothbrush holder is called Värgashmargan, and that your meatballs cost less than your carrier bags. We love that if we're a couple, we can hold hands and frolic through the bedding section like in 500 Days of Summer. And if we're single, we can look at the frolicking couples and remember that they break up in the film. There really is something for everyone.

But, for the love of Abba, why can't you just write 'double' and 'single' on your sheets instead of all the baffling geometric diagrams? So that philistines like myself don't get all the way back from Edmonton to find they've bought the wrong size and their bed curls up like a banana. Please. Thanks.

In which the A's have it

To be printed 26/08/10.


It was an odd feeling, last Thursday, to realise that I'm probably never going to get exam results again. Excepting blood tests, eye exams, pregnancy tests, potentially a driving test if I ever learn to steer a Morrisons trolley without causing a pile-up in the cereal aisle, my results-receiving years are over.

This is no bad thing, of course. I can happily go the rest of my years without the crippling nausea, the sweaty palms, the phantom memories of ridiculous answers looming up in your dreams. Did I accidentally answer 8b entirely in reference to Kylie lyrics? Did that HAPPEN? 

It's great prep for all kinds of social awkwardness later in life, getting exam results - all that publicly expressed emotion, walking around with the knowledge that at any moment, for no reason at all, you might burst out and accidentally hug a teacher.

Then there's the diplomatic 'what-did-you-get-no-what-did-you-get' shuffle, a minefield of potential face-palm moments. There will always be one acquaintance who tells you, with a completely neutral expression, that they got two Ds and an E. Always. This leaves you with two choices - either to guess wildly at an appropriate emotion and run with it ("Two Ds AND an E?? Whoooah there, amazing! Wonderful! Congrats! Shall we hug now?") or to just nod, adopt a similarly neutral expression and hope they'll jump in and save you* ("Riiiiight….that's… yeah, cool….mm. Shall we hug now?").

But more than unwittingly insulting people and pandemic hugging, the main evil to be dodged on results day has got to be the photographer. Are you female? Reasonably attractive? Wearing a flimsy t-shirt? Can you jump off a bench? Darling, we're gonna make you a star.

Notwithstanding the excellent publication in which I'm writing (the Herald never stoops to clichés, no siree), newspaper coverage of results days is becoming a cult phenomenon, for all the wrong reasons. There's even a blog, sexyalevels.tumblr.com, to celebrate results photos in all their backwards glory. It is fair enough, I feel, to gently remind the media that boys do exams too. They do, I've seen them! Fat girls as well. And spotty girls. And girls wearing loose, high-necked clothing who never feel the urge to leap in the air, throw their arms round each other or make excited faces with their ear clamped to a phone.

It's hard to escape the irony, though – that after years of telling us completely the opposite, the media now seem only to believe that nubile blonde females have a shot at academic success. Do we want our children to grow up believing that only attractive women have brains? What about an attractive woman's right to be thick, if she so wishes? At this rate, all the pretty teenage girls in this fine country will be racing off to do biochemistry degrees, and then where will we find our glamour models and reality TV contestants? Eh?

And it's comprehensive arguments like that, folks, that got me results just about worth jumping off a bench for.

*They won't. But you probably never need to see them again.

In which I have a tendency to curmudge.

To be printed 19/08/10.

I'm rather scared I might be becoming a curmudgeon. I'm not sure any kind of measuring device exists for curmudgeonliness, but if it did I'd say I was edging worryingly up the scale, somewhere in the Jack Dee region, beyond Alan Davies, heading dangerously towards Bernard Black.

I used to be in favour of fun. There was a time, I dimly remember, before 80 per cent of my energy was expended waving an angry fist at people who take too long at railway station ticket machines. But now, like a permanent case of PMT, everything annoys me. Rarely a day goes by now where I don't have to stop myself thwacking a slow tourist over the head with their own map. When I'm Queen of the World, all tube and train stations will have tannoy announcements saying, "You may not be in a hurry, but everyone else is. So GET A BLEEDING MOVE ON."

I may not have a driver's license, but I pride myself on being a really good walker. I power along like a suede-shod guided missile, bobbing and weaving through crowds with ease. I know how to use my elbows sparingly but effectively and I never wear huge, vision-obscuring rucksacks or stop dead in the middle of Oxford Street to rummage through my bag, causing a ten-people pile up behind me. But striving for this constant level of pedestrian perfection means I am constantly disappointed when everyone else falls short of my exacting standards.

Likewise people who sit down on the outer, aisle-side seat on trains or buses, then insist I clamber over to the inside instead of just moving across, like a decent human being. What baffles me is not the strategic bag-placement - we all try to get away with that one after all, as there is nothing as loathsome as having to share three foot of personal space with someone who might be a) smelly or b) insane - no, it's the determination to remain aisle-side, whatever happens. Do you honestly think I'm going to refuse to let you off? That you'll politely request to be freed for disembarkation, and I'll just turn round and say "Naaah, you're not going anywhere darlin'"?

Am I painting a curmudgeonly enough picture? I have mental files, whole clunking cabinets of peeves and grievances, all accumulating in my head on a daily basis. People who need things repeated more than once. People who try to fish your sentences without any idea what you're going to say. Shop staff who don't give you enough time to get your change back in your purse and your purse in your bag before they move on to the next person. The sign in the window of TK Maxx that says "Always up to 60 per cent less".

But the trouble is, the very act of being irritable has now become irritating. It's the currency of stocking filler books, stand-up comedy and columns like this, harping on about how stupid and ineffectual the world is because people say, "at the end of the day" more often than Wordsworth would have approved of*.

So I am taking precautionary measures before the problem gets out of hand, and putting myself on a strict anti-grump programme. It involves precise dosage of Julie Andrews movies, administered daily, followed by regular sessions of kitten-stroking while listening to The New Seekers' 1971 hit I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.

Of course, the challenge with this last step is managing to hum along sweetly without replacing the lyrics with "I'd like to teach the world to go about their daily business in an efficient manner without CONSTANTLY GETTING ON MY TITS", but I'm doing my best. Which is all a reasonable person can ask for.

*Actually Wordsworth might have been quite a fan of the phrase, given its suggestions of sunsets and his big love for the natural sublime.

In which Percy gets a spring clean.

Printed 05/11/10.

You might notice that I'm walking a little more lightly on my feet today. There is a spring in my step, a serenity in my smile. I can see clearly, now the receipts have gone. Because yesterday, readers, was purse clearout day.

I don't know how often you replace your purse/wallet/sporren/velvet pouch, but if your money-storing habits are anything like mine, you'll know that the day you get a new one is a Big Deal. 

Transferring the contents over is like rebooting your life. It's immensely cathartic – you sort through the crumpled remnants of your being and create new order. Purse zen, if you will. I've always liked to think that Eminem's 2002 hit Cleanin' Out My Closet could have worked just as well as Cleanin' Out My Wallet, though his receipts stash might just have been too scintillating for young ears.

Some of you might be reading this, saying "but don't you just move it all from the old purse to the new one?" * The answer, dear philistines, is NO. That would be like buying a new house and filling it with the broken sofa bed, stained rug and half-eaten packet of bran flakes from your old house. New purse day is an opportunity for reflection of a kind that doesn't come along very often, and should be taken full advantage of. Think of it as a much-cheaper therapy session, with a lovely new-leather smell.

Yes, it's a process that produces many different emotions. From confusion ("When did I spend £55 in B&Q?" "Why do I have a business card from a kitchen fitter named Clive?" "When was I ever in Cheam?"), to misty-eyed nostalgia ("Ohhh, the time we bought that cheesecake from Londis then ate it on that bus before that mad bloke weed out the window… good times guys, good times.").

There's a fair bit of self-examination inherent in purse clearing-out as well. You don't want to be doing it in a vulnerable frame of mind, in case you just can't handle the truth. The truth being that the reason you're skint isn't, as you tell everyone, the ruddy government/Student Loans company/rocketing council tax rates, but because you spend £37 a week on Frijj chocolate milk. 

Then there's all the things you bought because the changing room mirror lied, only to stash away in your Wardrobe Corner of Shame as soon as you got them home. You can't hide from them on purse clearout day. You must confront your reckless purchasing and vow to do better (come to think of it, was the Wardrobe Corner of Shame what Eminem was actually talking about? Must google.)

And forget looking at someone's iPod as a window into their soul – I'd rather rummage through the wallet of a potential beau any day. What's this, a Holland and Barrett habit? £62 in Millets? Alas, it clearly wasn't to be. Likewise, anyone with a nearly-full Nandos loyalty card would be worth sticking with. At least until they worked up to the half-chicken.

*Others of you might be reading this saying, "But I throw my receipts and old train tickets and things away as I go." If this is the case, you probably need to find another columnist. There is nothing here for you.

In which the world is an endlessly baffling place.

To be printed 29/07/10 (which is my half birthday! Get your card in the post now).

Things I Don't Understand (and probably never will):

The Perle de Lait adverts.

First we were meant to gurn because our yogurt was too sour, now we're meant to put it on our faces like moisturiser. Leading me to believe that while French women Don't Get Fat, they do walk around pulling stupid faces and rubbing yogurt on their skin. Which isn't necessarily preferable, if you ask me. I know which I'd rather sit next to on the bus.

Who pays for Odeon Premier seats?

How loaded does one have to be to fork out a whole extra two quid for the pleasure of waggling one's legs about a bit? After much consideration I have come up with three possible answers: 1) That it's people who mistakenly think they're booking with an airline 2) That it's people with piles, who need the extra cushioning, and 3) That it's people trying to impress on dates - in which case they'd be advised to splash the cash on a Ben and Jerry's Wich, the most romantic cinema snack known to man, and not on what's ostensibly another four inches you'll have to reach to get an arm round their shoulders. Think, people.

Does anyone have an internet service provider that they don't hate with the fire of a thousand suns?

I imagine that in the fledgling days of the internet, when it was dreamed that one day we would all have access in the comfort of our own homes, part of that dream was a reliable supply from a company qualified and capable to meet your needs. Not solid weeks spent on the phone to someone pretending to be called Nigel saying things like, "I've plugged yellow cable A into blue outlet C, and the wiggly thing STILL ISN'T FLASHING." And as no one has any story involving their service provider than doesn't begin with a fit of involuntary shuddering, I'm beginning to think that maybe no one is actually capable of this job. It might just be a little too far-reaching for human brains. Maybe we peaked at the walkman.

What a hedge fund is.

My friend Fiona, an investment banker (how great it is when one finally gets to the age where you can refer to people as 'my friend, the investment banker' rather than 'my friend, that one who sicked on Offington roundabout), has tried to explain hedge funds to me numerous times. But as soon as she starts explaining, I am instantly transported to a place where little kittens leap over rainbows, while Good Morning Starshine plays gently in the background. So far I know this: they have nothing to do with shrubbery, but do need pruning from time to time.

How BHS is still in business.

It needs to be shown some respect, really, for sheer audacity - what other company would get away with churning out the same shapeless jersey separates for nigh on 13 years without anybody stepping in and saying, "But wait a minute… by George, this is tat!" It's led me to believe that maybe BHS is a front for something altogether more sinister, maybe a nationwide chain of crack dens. Crack dens with coffee shops.

In which I want mod cons, not actual cons.

To be printed 22/07/10.

I'm genuinely quite excited about flathunting again. This is naïve, I know, like the way women block out the pain of childbirth in order to be able to put themselves through it more than once, but still I am excited. After three years in the same house, during which I've watched it become steadily more derelict and mold-encrusted, its cupboards more full of unclaimed carbohydrates and its plugholes more full of unidentified hair, it's time to move on. Of course, my "pastures new" are most likely to be a woodchipped maisonette above a takeaway, but it's wistful all the same.

This point of the flathunting process is definitely the good bit. It's the bit where you can still dream of stripped wood flooring and Edwardian fireplaces and a neighbour who just 'happens' to be a Calvin Klein model. When you can say things like, "three floors up with no lift will be fine, we could use the exercise" and actually believe them. Before the estate agent brethren come and piddle on your property parade.

Estate agents are my third least favourite people to deal with, after beauty counter assistants and the men who work in Phones 4U. I can barely recall an encounter with an estate agent that hasn't left me wanting to gnaw my own arm off and drown it in a pool of my tears. This summer's going to be an especial bundle of fun because I get to deal with a double dose of them - one lot trying to find me the new place, and the other lot (let's call them Incompetent, McLiars and Sons) - trying to avoid giving me my deposit back from the one I'm currently living in. 

I anticipate having a lot of conversations that go like this:

Squeaky-voiced youth named Dwayne: "We've got a two-bed in Wapping for £500 a week that we think you'll be very interested in." 

Me: "Really, how so? Because there are three of us…"

Dwayne: "It has a very spacious downstairs loo."

Me: "…and Wapping's about an hour away from where we're looking, isn't it…"

Dwayne: "Excellent transport links."

Me: "…and £500 seems to be stretching our budget to accommodate a moon launch."

Dwayne: "Did I mention the light fittings?"

Me: "What about the light fittings?"

Dwayne: "Well. It has them."

But, like women with their babies, I fully believe that two months of being idiot-adjacent will all feel worth it in the end. When I hold that key in my cradled arms, I will know that I'm home. And provided there's a patio to bury Dwayne under, I think we'll be very happy.

In which even Pavement can't convince me

Printed 15/07/10.

Haircuts. For most, an unremarkable factor of modern life. For some, a terrifying ordeal fraught with anxiety, horror and potential life-ruining. Well ok, for me. 

You'd think that, as a girl who knows her way around a make-up bag (indeed, a girl who once successfully applied liquid eyeliner standing up on the 73 bus), I'd like getting haircuts. Aren't they, after all, the pinnacle of our "pampering" routines? More than that, don't they help us discover who we are as a PERSON? As the holy trinity of female propaganda (magazines; telly; people you overhear in changing rooms) will have you believe, a girl's hairdresser is meant to occupy a special place in your life that no on else can. They laugh with you, cry with you, they can turn you from Brillo pad to brilliant in a few swift flicks of a tailcomb. Thus goes the legend. 

*Not me*

I wouldn't know - I haven't been to a hairdresser since December 28th, 2003. The date is scorched onto my memory like a GHD straightening wound. On that day, leaving with yet another cut that looked vaguely like something an angry six year old might do to a Barbie, I vowed never to return. 

In my 15 years of experience, I had learned the following about hairdressers: They will give you the haircut they want to give you, not the one in the photo. They will give you haircuts that require a full-scale military operation of blowdrying, tonging, swooshing and spritzing every morning to look anything like they did on leaving the salon. When you say "loose waves'" they hear "corkscrew curls". 

And worst of all, they like to lecture you on mistreatment of your hair as though they are social services quizzing an unfit mother. They tut, and tsk, and peer at your split ends, and berate you for doing anything with your hair other than stroking it gently while a Brahms lullaby plays in the background. As far as I can tell, things you're not meant to do with your hair include: straighten it, curl it, dry it, wash it, colour it, tie it up, leave it down, or take it on holiday. Yet, by Jove, these are all the things the hair industry is built on! Where is the humanity? 

So I took matters, and scissors, into my own hands and started doing my own. For seven years, I was barnet self-sufficient, like the Barbara Good of beauty (with less good hair). There were a few mishaps, yes, and a few days that necessitated a Very Big Hat, but by and large I got by ok. My hair remained firmly attached to my follicles, and nobody threw things at me in the street. 

But now I fear the time may have come to skulk back to the salon. For one thing, once you're out of your teens, cutting your own hair becomes a bit like tie-dying your bedspread or putting kooky coloured laces in your Doc Martens. It looks like purposeful kookiness, heaven forbid. Also, to be a grown woman afraid of the hairdressers is stupid. 

And finally, because after seven years of ad-hoc trimming with blunt scissors two minutes before leaving the house, I have created a fringe monster. My fringe has more power over my face than I do. Entire days have been ruined because my fringe has refused to play ball. So if it's a toss-up between being bossed around by a hairdresser or bossed around by an inanimate three inch pelt at the top of my forehead, I know which I'm going to choose.

In which I'm not dressing to the max, thanks all the same.

Shiny Style - Dressing to the max

The long and short of the maxi dress trend

In which my love don't cost a thing.

To be printed 08/07/10.

Here's a question: why does anybody become a journalist? Is it for the sheer joy of communicating vital (or not so vital) information to others? Is it because they read Evelyn Waugh's Scoop and thought it was all true? Is it because the other option was a painting themselves gold and starting a career as a living statue?

No. It's for the freebies. And if anyone claims otherwise, they are lying through their canapé. I have no pension plan, no health benefits, no in-office gym or even a particularly comfortable desk chair, but I do have daily opportunities to blag myself hoards of wonderful tat I never knew I needed.

Things I've been gifted in the last few months include: a playsuit, a handbag, a pair of shoes, a voucher for Specsavers, a selection of condiments, four bottles of wine, a case of chocolate, a silk scarf, a tip to New York that never happened and, by far the best, a diamante-encrusted USB stick. And I'm only a rookie, a journalist of the most amateurish breed it's possible to be while actually getting paid for it. If I'm raking in this kind of booty, people like Jane Moore and AA Gill must be driving around in golden chariots being fed free caviar by winged cherubs.

I'm told that eventually the novelty wears off, but what a sad day that will be. When one is too jaded and professional to treat one's career like a perpetual game of Supermarket Sweep, grabbing everything you can before Dale Winton arrives and demotes you to the post room. Until that day comes, if anyone needs me, I'll be the girl sitting under the buffet table with pastry crumbs down her front, rifling through goodie bags to check they're all 'equal'.

Of course, ninety percent of all the free stuff is either ugly, the wrong size or something you have no use for, like contact lens fluid or a car air freshener. But that isn't the point. The point is that YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR IT. And as Janet and Luther told us all those years ago, the best things in life are free.

There are a couple of downsides though. Firstly, there's the judgement of other, older, more freebie-weary hacks. Nothing spoils the fun of looting more than somebody from somewhere proper, eyeing you up and down with a look that says, "oh lore, actually taking the freebies are we? How vulgar." It makes you feel like the guest at the royal banquet who accidentally drinks the finger bowl.

Then there's the fact that, enormous though your joy is, you aren't really allowed to go on about it. Because unless you're sharing your stash with them, and often even if you are, people find it really irritating when you talk about all your free stuff. I mean, you've just read 400 words about it and I'll bet you're already dreaming about ramming a biro into my gullet, aren't you? A biro you paid for.

In which I will probably lose about half of my friends.

Printed 01/07/10.

The Top 5 Things You Just Shouldn't Tweet (or Facebook)

1. Death

A long time ago, the passing of a loved one from this world to the next would be announced by telegram. Just like Twitter's 140 characters, they too were adhering to a strict limit - yet somehow there is far more emotion in "AUNTIE MABEL SADLY DEPARTED STOP FELL OFF OUTHOUSE ROOF STOP BEQUEATHS YOU BEST HATPIN STOP" than there is in 'RIP Auntie Mabel, may you be the brightest star in the sky, you will be missed :(" written underneath a picture of you playing beer pong in a candy bikini top. Not until there's a dislike button, anyway.

2. Pregnancy

You've got a bun in the oven! A little bundle of joy! Of COURSE you want to share the news with the world, as quickly as possible. So what do you do? Spend a day making phone calls to your nearest and dearest, so they can gush over the news with you? Hire a plane with a banner with your due date written on it to fly over your hometown? Nah, you change your profile picture to an ultrasound and regale everyone you've ever met with thrice-weekly updates on your morning sickness.

3. Break-ups

Now, I know the status-change is an unavoidable factor in a modern relationship casualty. There it sits on everybody's homepage, blaring "Lonely McNeedy is now single" with a little broken heart next to it, just in case people have difficulty envisaging your pain. But even Facebook has an airing cupboard for that dirty laundry, and it's called the 'hide' button. Meanwhile the accompanying status - letting us all know what a cretin he is, and how you'll be crying into a tub of pralines and cream for a month because the love you once thought would never end has now been reduced to a little fractured husk of hate - that's even easier to deal with. Just don't write it in the first place.

4. Weight loss

Reasons for this are twofold; firstly, for those who'd quite like to drop a few pounds themselves, it is irritating in the extreme to read that you've, omg, lost a stone! Particularly if they read it with a Magnum in one hand and a cider in the other.  Secondly, for those unconcerned with weightless, it is embarrassing to have to read about yours. It's terribly un-British, like going on about how much you earn, or your bowel difficulties (prime candidates were I to make this column a two-parter). People then feel compelled to say something, but what to say? A hearty "well done!" may as well read, "about time, you lardy cow."

5. Exam results

I've been over this one numerous times in my head, and I'm sorry to say that I just don't think there's any way one can tweet their exam results with dignity. It's harsh, I know, particularly with degree results, when all you want to do is run throug the streets sounding a klaxon, naked but for a sash saying ALL THE CASH WAS WORTH IT (MAYBE). But self-congratulatory statuses will only counter the warm glow of your achievement with the chilly breeze of everyone secretly hating you. If you really can't fight the urge, change your status in the middle of the night, sit grinning at it for a few hours, then delete it before anyone sees.

In which there's a reason they call it a Bachelor's...

To be printed 24/06/10.


I'm aware that being proud of my university, the one I'm not even a student at anymore, is redundant in exactly the way I hate football fans moping about like cold sick because "they" lost. You didn't lose, eleven men you've never met in a stadium a million miles away lost, and as they get chauffeured home to sleep on their crispy bed of money wearing their diamond shoes, they're probably less gutted than you are.

Meanwhile, any pride I might take in UCL's achievements feels fraudulent. It's bootlegging emotion. For the very reasonable sum of £9000, I paid for the privilege of being smug every time someone in the physics department does something exciting with an atom. It's like the country's most expensive private members' club, but instead of a monogrammed towelling robe and personal maid to warm up my toilet seat, I have four carrier bags full of textbooks I never read, and the opportunity to say "yar, I went there…" whenever it gets mentioned on the news. To the kettle, if nobody else is in the room.

Of course, pride isn't always the issue. When that terrorist tried to blow up that plane on Christmas Day, every single news story found it crucial to mention that he went to UCL. "They've caught a terrorist on a plane to Boston," announced Mum over the turkey. "He went to your uni." YOUR uni. As though I might have cut in front of him in the union once and unleashed a snowballing torrent of rage against the Western world. I think the expected reaction was for me to clutch at my hair and shriek "Not Farouk? He told me he wanted those chemicals for an exfoliating treatment, dagnammit!" 

There was a brief turn up for the books when the Margaret Mountford left The Apprentice to do a PhD in Papyrology at UCL (proving we are a big enough lure to leave Alan Sugar’s jabby right hand for a life buried in bits of dusty paper), then we hit the headlines again last month on the rather less honourable merit of FitFinder, the social flirting network devised by final year computer science student Rich Martell. After creating the site, which allows students to post public messages about hotties they've spied around campus in the hope of initiating an amorous liaison, and which quickly expanded to 52 universities across the country with over four million hits in its first month, Martell was fined £300 for "bringing the university into disrepute."

Whether he should have been charged that much for what is essentially an electronic version of scribbling “The one with the visible bra straps, eight o’clock, I WOULD” on the back of a beermat, I don’t know. What I do know is this: demeaning or otherwise, UCL students probably do need a FitFinder. Our list of noble alumni reads: Ghandi; Coldplay; Ricky Gervais. What we needed wasn’t so much a forum for the casual recognition of attractiveness as a personal cupid with a huge flashing arrow, screaming “There! That one! With the rucksack! If you washed his hair and changed his trousers, he could definitely be a passable seven!” 

But the site itself, I see would very likely ruin your life. Not so much through the “indecent and inappropriate comments” cited as reason for the numerous complaints, but more, I imagine, because nobody could get a degree done while checking at hourly intervals day and night to see if they’d been scoped. Every essay would take a backseat to constantly refreshing the page, winsomely hoping for the post that read, “Blonde girl with the ladder in her tights by the photocopier, I think you are dreamy. Want to go eat houmous together in a meadow?*” Then everyone would fail everything and UCL would slide rapidly down the league tables in a flurry of on-campus romping and exotic STIs. And what would I have to be fraudulently proud of then, eh?

No, my university will remain a place where people go to do things with atoms, look at dusty paper and possibly meet future terrorists. And that is the way I will fondly remember it to my children. 

*This is not a euphemism.

In which I thought that drone was always there, personally...

To be printed 17/06/10.


Another four years, another World Cup, another month as the Great Pretender. There are loads of us, all across the world. We are the ones in the corners of living rooms standing at the back of pubs, woofing all the crisps and coming in a second too late on our grunts and groans. We're the ones who ask hopefully if "that's it" at half time, make sardonic remarks every time a pundit uses bad grammar and need to be reminded at frequent intervals that David Beckham isn't actually playing.


But at least we're trying. We're not that other network of people, the ones holding poetry readings in basement bars and making posters for craft fayres with "football free zone" on them. Those other people would probably call us cowards, for faking it while they're proud to stand up and be counted, but the way I see it, we're contributing to national morale. Simply by turning up, doing some half-arsed whoops and taking advantage of the chance to drink beer at arbitrary hours of the day, we're adding to the collective positive energy that will swoosh across the ocean and possibly make our boys win (I have it on good authority from a football fan that This Is How It Works).


Besides, we're not total liars. Most of us Great Pretenders practise a form of football agnosticism, flitting between moments of abject dismissal and moments of steadfast belief, when we think, "They've kicked it in the goal! And I feel happy! This must be what pure joy is like."


But when we are faking it, we're faking it for a number of different reasons. The first one is the same reason we lie about having seen Citizen Kane and liking tequila - we don't want to be left out. It is human nature that when there is a room full of your friends, all laughing and cheering and eating greasy snacks, with the possible exception of a World of Warcraft tournament or some sort of ritual cult sacrifice, you will want to be a part of it. They ask, "are you coming to watch the match?", you internally shriek, "what else am I going to do, stay home and knit while you all bond without me??" and say, "yes, lovely. I'll be there with appropriately-coloured bells on."


Then we fake it because we don't want to be a cliché. This applies largely to women, but also, I reckon, to gay men, sciencey men and men with artistic haircuts. I pretend to enjoy football because I already wear pink, have blonde hair and catch a ball like an arthritic platypus. My feminist barometer (or femometer, if you will) doesn't leave much room for such dreadfully girly behaviour as not liking football. So I go, I chant, I cheer, I break a nail during a goal celebration and I say NOTHING about it.


Then lastly, we fake it because, one of these days, there is the tiny niggling chance that we might actually win. Ad wisely, we are well aware that what you don't see in all those pictures of the victorious team in '66 is a little huddle of people, just out of shot, quietly reading books and wondering what all the fuss was about. Before being trampled by a crowd in Chelsea boots with wooden clackers.

In which I am patient (Train in Vain)

To be printed 10/06/10.

If ever you need proof that compassion and community is alive and well in Britian, get yourself stuck on a stationary train for two hours in the middle of Oxfordshire. We're not yet ten minutes into the promised two-hour delay, and the lady in the seat across from us has already started dolling out the extra strong mints. That's Blitz spirit for you.

When the voice over the tannoy informs you that you're going to be spending a vast, indefinite chunk of your day on a non-moving train in a field with no buffet car of refreshment trolley, the first thing you do, naturally, is assess your fellow passengers. You look at them each in turn and make mental notes on who is likely to a) have emergency food you may be able to buy off them, b) start to smell, c) be fascinating company, possibly resulting in an enduring life-long friendship, and d) become crazed under the pressure of the situation and start wailing, screaming or licking people.

Unfortunately, a specimen for d) is sitting next to me. He garnered immediate attention when we got on the train because he is playing, not inconspicuously, with an iPad – being the first time I'd seen one in real life, naturally I have been staring as though he were playing with a perfectly proportioned, miniature unicorn. Someone with an iPad, surely, will be able to get us out of this fix? After all, it's too small to be a laptop, too big to be a phone and too pointless to be a genuinely impressive possession, so the least it can be expected to do, after all the hoo-hah, is magically getting hundreds of passengers off an enormously delayed train and back to their respective sofas, safe and well and maybe with a frappe latte in their hands.

Attention was quickly deflected from the iPad Man's iPad, however, when I noticed his shoes. At this point the train was still moving and so it all seemed like an amusing diversion rather than the first clear sign that we were in the presence of a psychopath. iPad Man was wearing slip-on rubber shoes, rather like the ones people wear for windsurfing, but with INDIVIDUAL TOE COMPARTMENTS.

Not, to clarify, the slightly freakish shoes with one separate toe on each foot and the rest a four-toe compartment, which I have only just learned to look at without retching, but entirely freakish shoes with five separate toe sections on each foot. Like foot gloves. Gloves for feet. Judging by footwear, the most reliable barometer of human behaviour that we have, he will definitely be the one who goes mental and tries to claw his way out of the carriage with plastic cutlery.

But iPad Foot Glove Man aside, camaraderie is at a high. We are chatting, moaning together, debating what to do when the oxygen runs out and comparing notes on who looks like they'd be good to eat first (NOT me. I'm fleshy but definitely use too many skin products to be considered organic). I volunteer to go on a water-hunting mission, which quickly ends when I start having Evian-based hallucinations. Meanwhile, the tourist group behind us is making no secret of the fact that they have a half-full bag of Doritos about their person, but has made it very clear that they are Not Willing to Share.

"Thank you for your patience", says the driver over the tannoy. It's a nice sentiment, but one I have never quite understood – do we have an option of not being patient? Do they tentatively expect us to start rioting, throwing things and charging into the driver's carriage braying "Fiiiiiine, if you won't drive this ruddy thing WE WILL…"?

Of course not. We sit obediently, we read Sunday supplements from cover to cover, and we formulate conspiracy theories on what might be happening with the people in charge. Then when the train finally begins moving we whoop, hug each other and then resume normal Impersonal Travelling Strangers mode all the way home.

In which I am feeling Eurovicious.

To be printed 03/06/10. 

If election night was “like Eurovision for straight people”, then this year’s Eurovision was like election night for people who prefer their politicians wearing giant sparkly butterfly wings. And better than election night, the whole thing was over in a measly three hours and we came out of it with one conclusive winner (though a coalition of the German and Greek entries I would definitely like to see).

I’ve long thought that Eurovision, far from being the outdated and irrelevant cultural car crash many believe it to be, is actually a great, albeit distorted, barometer of our times.  It’s like viewing the music industry through a circus mirror, or maybe a haze of morphine. For starters, Lady Gaga references were all over the shop, which was no surprise. It is only natural that the woman who once performed on a giant toilet will find her spiritual home among the Boom Bang-a Bang clan.

Meanwhile the Serbian entry presented a glimpse of a future where Jedward advertise GHD straighteners, while Spain gave us that most glorious of things, a stage invasion far more entertaining than the performance itself. Far more worrying, though, are the acts you genuinely like. Eurovision, draws you in, seduces you to a point where you lose all semblance of personal taste.

It’s just like clothes shopping on holiday, when the oddest items ever committed to lycra suddenly start looking chic and interesting next to all the other dross. You buy them, get them home, hold them up on British soil and realise you’ve purchased yourself  something Sue Pollard might wear to clean the bath. And so it was on Saturday, when I found myself listening to Belgian entry Me and My Guitar, saying “this is EXCELLENT.  I am truly, deeply moved. I might have it as the first dance at my wedding.”

Then there was our offering.  By picking a song titled That Sounds Good to Me, I can only assume we’ve moved beyond national fondness for irony to a point where we’re just handing the continent a ready-made gag-on-a-plate. Up and down Europe, people were sitting in front of their tellies saying “nah…. too easy.” Next year I hope we go with t-shirts reading, “You were right about all the wars, now can we have a piddling point please?”

It didn’t help that they’d dressed him as a first year Durham law student out on the razz (suit, semi-unbuttoned shirt, shiny square-toed clown shoes), or that his backing dancers gave him the appearance of an embarrassed husband who’s been pulled up onstage at Priscilla Queen of the Desert. But the worst crime was choosing a song that just didn’t sound like Britain. At all. There was no whine, no grumble, no shades of grey or threat of a rain shower or tinge of Marmite-infused melancholy. With its cheery brand of Bublé-lite pop, it was like watching one’s Dad try to pronounce items off a Spanish menu.  It smacked of trying to be something we aren’t. There may as well have been a bidet onstage.

So until we get to a point where election night features David Dimbleby in a sequinned catsuit, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to play to Eurovision game. But as I like to remind whoever will listen, year after year, it’s ok – we had the Beatles. They can never take that away from us.

In which the sun has got its hat on, hip hip hip hooray!

To be printed 27/05/10.

Has anybody seen the devil? I'm his advocate. Some think I'm only playing at the role, but between you and me I'm pretty darned serious about this one – particularly in this next presentation, entitled Reasons to Hate Summer. I realise "hate" is a strong word, one that we're only meant to use for Hitler and late delivery men, but I feel if I'm not emphatic enough my point will get lost amid all the barbecue fumes and gay laughter.

I've lived with these controversial views for 22 years now, buoyed on purely by the belief that I can't be the only one who hates summer. Somewhere out there, I know there are more of you. You're all lying in darkened rooms with bags of frozen peas on your extremities, ignoring invites to picnics. And quite right too, but I'd appreciate it if you came out and revealed yourself for the purposes of this article. We could form a support group, where we meet in a refrigerated underground vault, eat shepherd's pie and wear massive jumpers. I'd like that.

1. Sweat.

The most obvious and basic of all summer downsides, I never understand why this doesn't put more people off. When you can't perform normal, day-to-day tasks like making a sandwich or sitting on a bus or blowdrying your hair without turning into a puddle of person, there is something wrong with the world.  

2. Smells.

What is the scent of summer? Freshly-mown grass, coconut sun cream, barbecuing burger suspended on a delicate breeze? Or is it, actually, when you really think about it, BO? And warm bin sack? And dog poo, slowly roasting on the pavement? Next time you're standing in a fat man's armpit on public transport, tell me honestly how much freshly-mown grass is wafting your way. (See also: sweat.)

3. Sunburn.

Your own is a pretty negative experience, yes, but almost more distressing is the parade of other people's. The worst are the leather handbag ladies, whose deep-etched mahogany faces read like a poster saying "Melanoma? Is that a Delia recipe?" The second worst are massive bald shirtless men with pink-striped bellies, giving them the curious appearance of a processed seafood stick. And the third worst are sunburned children, of any description, because they trigger my transformation into Super Suncream Girl (saving the nation's skin one squirt at a time). I'm not sure if you've ever tried to apply Factor 30 to a strange child in public, but parents don't always take it in the helpful spirit it was intended.

4. The Calorie Contradiction.

Those of you who say 'oh, I only want a small salad when it's hot' can shut up; summer is really about over-consumption. That's why we have Magnums, and Aztec Gold Magnums, and White Chocolate Magnums, and barbecues and drinking beer at 11am in the garden. However, summer is also about looking like a wee slip of a thing in a bikini. It is about having the longest, leanest limbs in the whole park, and using strategic moments to do a cartwheel where your top falls down. I ask here that you spot the paradox, and take a moment to ponder the unfairness.

Here endeth the lecture. If you'd like to take a leaflet on your way out, I'll look forward to seeing you all in the vault for some knitwear action. Alternatively, buy my book – Lauren Bravo's Summer Loving*. 

*Title ironic.

In which I fight prejudice, one sweaty sock at a time.

To be printed 20/05/10.


There are many prejudices in this life. While we, most of us, do our best to dodge the main ones - race, gender, sexuality, haircut - we are still living lives influenced daily by numerous other, more socially acceptable, prejudices. In the interests of self-improvement (and because my other option for this week's column was the words "Why did you all vote Tory, you south coast idiots?" in massive letters), I am addressing one of mine. I have, my whole life, been prejudiced against sporty people.

I could try to deny it - after all, some of my closest friends are sporty - but it's about time I confronted the issue. Every time I look at someone in workout gear, with their ergonomic trainers and their iPod strapped to their arm like an IV, a little voice in my head goes "coughPILLOCKcough."

There is, naturally, a lot of horror tied up with sport in my mind as a result of having to wear uniform knickershorts in public for four years (take note, Davison - you might have ruined a potentially great olympic career). But I think the main reason I tell myself I don't like sporty folk, same as with vegans and people who don't watch TV, is the smugness. It's the idea that their flagrant energy and desire to take care of themselves is all done to make me feel like a substandard person. In my head, the fact that they will live longer, and die thinner, and spend the time until that day feeling a lot less out of breath than me, all come second to their desire to scream, "Look at me, all healthy! Look how good at being human I am!"

But imagined smugness is not an excuse for persecution. "I torched her house because I thought she briefly pictured me in a bikini" would not stand up in court. Besides, there are plenty of things I'm probably smug about myself, without meaning to be. I don't smoke, I don't take recreational drugs (apart from Berocca, and I can quit that any time I want to) and I know all the words to Subterranean Homesick Blues. I probably ooze smugness. So in an effort to put aside my prejudice and become a more tolerant person, I am undertaking some aversion therapy and joining the ranks of the sporty. I have started jogging.

It took a while to put the plan into action, because first I had to find some proper trainers and an outfit that didn't immediately prompt other joggers to assume I must be lost and extrodite me to the nearest Starbucks. I settled on my PE trainers from year 10, because they might trick my brain into thinking I have the cardiovascular system of a 15-year-old, and a t-shirt from Hairspray the musical, just to make it subtly clear that I'm not really One Of Them.

So now, I am a jogger. I am a person who jogs. I am, by the way, still working with the word 'jog' rather than 'run' - baby steps and all that. Which, incidentally, is also how I'm doing the actual jogging. But still, it is exciting new territory. I can use words like "metabolism" and go shopping for sports bras. I think I may only be weeks away from a rucksack with some rocks in it. Prejudice successfully obliterated.

In which I am behind the times, by several minutes...

To be printed 13/05/10 (by which time this will be woefully out of date).

Oh dear. The whole country is in a shambles, and we have a mouse in our kitchen. Whether these two facts are related is as yet unconfirmed, but sources report that a little-read footnote in the Conservative manifesto included a scheme re-homing vermin in the houses of empoverished graduates. Just underneath the cuts in arts funding.

The annoying thing isn’t the mouse as such, but the fact that my mother was right. About a fortnight ago we had a conversation that went like this: Me – “We’re so lucky we don’t have mice. I’ve lived in that house two and a half years, and we’ve never even seen one.” Mother Superior – “Don’t be silly, you must have mice. All London houses have mice.” Me – “But we just don’t. Maybe it’s because we’re two floors up. Maybe it’s like nits, and they prefer clean houses. Maybe we have more than our fair quota of mould, and this is to address the balance. Whatever the reason, we are a mouse-free house.” Mother Superior – “Nah, you have mice. You just don’t know it yet.”

But ho, we know it now. So far we’re resolutely talking about mousey in the singular, because acknowledging that there might be mousey friends in the picture is more than my nerves can handle. Normally a fearless, gung-ho, intrepid female explorer type, I’ve suddenly become the unseen dame from Tom and Jerry, scurrying around in my furry slippers and shrieking at sudden noises. On being told about the mousey sighting by my flatmates (the way parents break the news about divorce – this isn’t your fault, there’s no need to be scared, we love you etc), I very nearly had to sleep the night standing on a chair in the kitchen.

My mum has been proved righter still by everyone else I’ve mentioned it to having gone, “Mice? Yeah, we’ve got loads. They’re called Dave, Dee, Dozy, Mick and Madonna and we feed them on sugar puffs” as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. And perhaps it is a rite of passage in London living, like rocketing council tax and pollution turning your snot black. But that hasn’t stopped me entering rooms like a police negotiator, announcing, “I am HERE, in my KITCHEN, just reaching for a CUP-A-SOUP, no need to make any sudden movements…”.

Meanwhile, we’re all twitchy and tiptoeing as we wait to find out what’s going to happen to the government (I’m writing this on Sunday, so forgive me if by publication it’s all been resolved into a nice job share, with Dave, Nick and Gord taking two days each and Lorraine Kelly filling in on Sundays). Scary though the prospects at the end of it might be, the political limbo bit is actually a tiny bit exciting. Go on, admit it. It’s like the bit between Christmas and New Year where nobody really knows what they’re meant to be doing. Do all the laws still stand? Are we allowed to do anything we couldn’t before, like drive on the other side of the road or keep ostriches on our allotments? Has anybody looked into it?

Sooner or later though, for better or worse or Tory, I guess we’ll have to settle on one of them to rule the country. Because once the turkey’s all used up, Christmas stops being fun; driving on the other side of the road would cause more death than the novelty is probably worth; and ostriches just taste like cows anyway. Besides, we need somebody to name the mouse after.

In which Pamela Haynes-Wallis has something to say

To be printed 06/05/10.

Happy election day everybody! I’m not sure what the mood will be by the time you read this – perhaps Gillian Duffy will have crept in as an outside contender, heading up the Monster Raving Loony party with Eddie from Love Thy Neighbour as second in command – but from where I’m standing on Monday morning everything is looking decidedly uncertain. If this were X-Factor, Peter Dickson would be booming “ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN” while Brown, Cameron and Clegg tried to pout in front of a wind machine.

From a purely entertaining point of view, it’s been an exciting few months. It’s also been an educational one, and as we all stock up on Red Bull and Haribo for the final stretch tonight, I’d like to look at all the Things I Have Learned in This Election:

1. The British Public Can’t Vote Properly. 

There is a veritable wealth of examples from talent show television that I could draw on here, but I would like to focus on the one that is still raw – Stephanie being voted off Over the Rainbow on Sunday. When the nation can’t even recognise a fantastic rendition of Mr Bojangles (not to mention other potential evictee Steph’s flawless performance), it worries me that they can be allowed to pick who runs the country. Though as a side thought, if they could somehow arrange for the losing candidates to ride an enormous crescent moon back to their stately homes, weeping, I think it would add a little extra razz to the proceedings.

2. Elections Can Be Fun. 

My mother can usually be trusted to find an interesting diversion in any bleak situation (stemming from years of playing the numberplate game on vomitous car journeys), and she’s come up trumps for the election with ‘Find your Tory name’. Take your Grandmother’s/Grandfather’s first name, then double barrel the name of the street you grew up in with the name of your old headteacher. My variations are the deliciously alliterative Blanche Beaufort-Bugden and the altogether snootier Pamela Haynes-Wallis. Put me down for the moat cleaning.

3. Frankly, I’d Like a Prime Minister Who Knows a Bigot When He Sees One. 

Whether Gordon got a little too exuberant with his bigot-spotting is, I suppose, a matter of opinion. But the whole affair has made me think I’d prefer it if the entire election was staged like a game of bigot whack-a-rat, with members of the public in a line up spouting opinions and the candidates with a big foam mallet, running up and down spotting the bigots and bopping them on the head. But maybe that’s just me.

4.  Everybody has a Slightly Different Idea of What a Hung Parliament Actually Means, and Nobody has Bothered to Google it. 

“The Queen picks the Prime Minister,” says my flatmate. “Or no, maybe it means the Queen makes the decisions when they can’t decide. Anyway, it’s something to do with the Queen.” Which is exciting, isn’t it? The Queen! We’d all forgotten about her.

In which channelling conceptual boyfriend chic is totally BIJ.

ShinyStyle - Fashion Translator: your guide to that industry lingo

In which we encounter a problem The Drifters never had...

To be printed 29/04/10.

As a strident feminist*, there is little I take more pleasure in than stomping over a few stereotyping myths. I stomp over them, in my non-gender-specific shoes, then I kick back with a… what’s a non-gender-specific drink? Cider maybe? Cider, in a glass, with a bit of ice but not loads. I kick back with one of those, listen to some non-gender-aligned music and enjoy a small moment of pride, for having Proved the Misogynists Wrong.

I was a little overdue a myth-stomping feat this weekend, my last one having been several weeks ago when I correctly named Michael Owen as the youngest British premiership footballer of the 20^th century at a pub quiz in the face of opposition from my male flatmates, and I have since been set back by a few spider-catching incidents and some re-runs of Cougar Town. So, to top up the quota, Female Flatmate and I decided to have a barbecue.

It was a small affair – shattering the first myth of the bunch: that barbecues have to be a Massive Deal, involving loads of prepping and muscle-flexing and borrowing of garden furniture from Mrs Down the Road. We blew that myth out of the water, simply by having nobody else we could be bothered to invite round. So it was a nice, intimate, rooftop barbecue for two.

Then we did the shopping. Another opportunity for female reclamation of the sport, by proving that barbecues don’t have to be heaving, carnivorous affairs full of massive hunks of blackened, unidentifiable flesh (besides, barbecued sausage eating was ruled out several years ago by that “When Will I See You Again?” food poisoning advert – thanks, Food Standards Agency). No, we would make a modest feast of vegetable kebabs and some homemade burgers. Veg, protein, carb. Lovely.

There’s something brilliantly decadent about whipping out a barbecue for an everyday dinner. Like making your morning toast with a blowtorch, or spit roasting a Findus crispy pancake. It feels like it shouldn’t be allowed. But now I’ve started, I’m inclined to start barbecuing everything – it could be an era of groundbreaking experimentation, like when the Bravo family first got a toaster and my brothers and I ate every single meal on toast for about three weeks. I ate grapes on toast. Biscuits on toast. Salmon en croute on toast. Now I will barbecue my breakfast, chargrill my cheese sandwiches, warm my Horlicks through on some hot smoky coals. This could have started years ago, but I never knew just how easy barbecuing was before.

Easy, that is, until you melt your roof. After we’d eaten the food, cracked open some beers, and were basking in the contented sense of primal achievement you get having successfully heated some meat and not died in the process, we noticed something. Black, sticky gumph, oozing out from the bottom of our disposable barbecue. It was tarmac. We’d melted the roof.

Excellent timing, then, for Male Flatmate no.1 to come home and successfully override our myth-stomping glow with smug rants about “putting it on bricks” and “watertight ceilings” and “Duuuuuhhhh.” But let it be said, the food was delicious, the roof solidified again, and Male Flatmate no.1 was forced to watch Over the Rainbow to balance out the gender gap. Someone alert Germaine, and pass me that cider.

*Is anyone ever a strident anything else? It seems to be an adjective reserved for that one, very specific, occasion of noun-accompaniment. As such, when I am feeling my most feministy, I stride everywhere. And use Trident toothpaste.

In which fashion lets them eat cake

LINK: ShinyStyle - How fashion and food became friends again

In which we should all shop to the Maxx

LINK: Shiny Style - Unsung heroes of the high street

In which that's why Doctors go to Iceland

To be printed 22/04/10.

It’s not until a volcanic ash cloud swamps half the country that you realise your friends all lead far more exciting, jetsetty lives than you do. I currently know people waiting for flights to America, out of Kuala Lumpur, to Copenhagen, out of France and back from Bangkok. My Facebook wall reads like a who’s-who of glamorous globetrotters, all saying things like, “Looks like another three days in the Maldives for me! Bev, will you please feed the cat?” And while I really do feel pain for all those people whose plans are being scuppered by the thoughtless trantrum-throwing of Mother Nature (my money’s on PMS), it’s just making me more aware than usual that I never go anywhere. I consider a trip to the East Finchley Tesco an excursion of some merit.

The ash cloud has also raised awareness in another area; namely, my complete idiocy in sciencey matters. My first question on hearing about the cloud was “can’t the planes just fly underneath it?” My second was “can’t they put a bit of mesh over the engines, like a tea strainer?” And my third, by far the most sincere of all my efforts to help with the continent-wide crisis, was “What would the Doctor do?”

Because you’ve got to admit it, it sounds like a perfect Doctor Who storyline. It’s the stuff Steven Moffat’s dreams are made of. In the episode, they would climb down into the middle of the volcano and discover it was being operated by Davros. What the people thought was ash would actually turn out to be tiny particles of alien membrane, showered down to imbibe itself into the human race to build its own lava-army, with which they would form a giant set of living toy soldiers, and use them to play massive intergalactic games of Risk against the Sycorax.

The Doctor, on realising this, would be forced to do a bit of soul-searching, staring into the depths of the volcano, while the feisty assistant discovered a big clicky button somewhere that said, “Remove ash”. Then would follow an intense dialogue over whether the Doctor had the right to interfere with the course of Earth’s destiny and Ryan Air’s net profit by getting rid of the ash, during which the Daleks would arrive and surround them. After some witty banter where the Doctor pretended to be trying to get to a stag do in Marbella, they would fly the Tardis into the atmosphere and spin around vigorously enough to disperse the ash across the galaxy. Then would follow a montage where everybody got to go home or get on their planes and greet loved ones, a bit like the end of Love Actually.

Whether the transport secretary has thought of this approach I’m not sure, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to mention.

In which I'm a fan of Gregorian chanting.

To be printed 156/04/10.

In life, there will always be conversations that cause excruciating embarrassment to all forced to listen to them. One is a couple debating who loves each other more. One is a couple arguing (actually, this one is excruiciating to all but me – I LOVE an arguing couple. They are my sport, I listen with popcorn). And the third is anyone, anyone at all, discussing ‘what music they’re into’.

I’ve always had a strong sensibility of ick where this topic is concerned – anybody asking me the fateful question on first acquaintance instantly earns a black mark next to their name, removable only by careful application of ginger wine or revelation that their uncle is the Sultan of Brunei – but it was only yesterday that I realised quite the extent of the ick.

I was sitting on a replacement bus service from Three Bridges to Brighton*. Behind me, pretty much within a minute of boarding, a middle-aged man in a tweed blazer struck up a conversation with a vaguely trendy young fellamelad, about music. I listened to their conversation the whole way, because it was impossible not to, and because it was such a delicious example of why these conversations are hideous. Tweed Man got stuck in with the obvious question:

“So, what sort of music are you into?” Yeuch, bleuch, blargh.

“Oh,” Young Fellamelad pondered. “I like a bit of everything, really…”

OF COURSE YOU DO. WE ALL DO. IT’S CHARACTERISTIC OF THE HUMAN RACE, YOU FOOL, EXCEPT MAYBE FOR THOSE FREAKS WHO LIVE ENTIRELY ON MARMITE.

“Mainly indie rock,” he continued. “Some reggae… a bit of hip-hop… electro… folk… blues…” Then he delivered the killer line. “I like anything with a bit of originality, really. That’s what I mainly look for.”

Is it? IS IT? Odd, because last I looked the rest of the music-buying public were crying out for songs that sounded exactly the same as the last one they listened to. “More of the same!” they plead from the aisles in HMV. “For pity’s sake nothing ORIGINAL, heaven forbid…”

Of course, I’m being cruel. Young Fellamelad probably couldn’t help giving those insipid, textbook answers, because they are programmed into all of us. We are all meant to say we “like a bit of everything”, just as we are all meant to say that we “enjoy travelling” and loved Slumdog Millionaire and think Connery was the best James Bond.

It just goes to show that the music conversation is a redundant format. It should be replaced with something much more effective, like just swapping iPods, or playing Boff, Marry, Kill: Paul Simon, Prince, Pete Doherty. Or just shutting the heck up and looking at each other’s shoes. You can tell 80 per cent of a person’s music taste just by looking at their shoes, after all.

So TM and YFM carried on with their conversation in the traditional manner. TM raved about Arcade Fire. YFM rambled on about being big on 60s guitar, “like Hendrix. And Clapton. And… well, y’know, Hendrix.” There was a particularly brilliant segment where TM tried to explain to YFM who Harry Nilson was, without singing I Can‘t Live (if Living is Without You). Then after five minutes he did sing it, and spent another five minutes trying to remember who covered it in the 90s, while YFM interjected “Whitney Houston. Yar, I’m pretty sure it was Whitney Houston. Cos it was in The Bodyguard, wasn’t it?”

Whether the whole bus was yearning to turn round and shriek “It was Mariah Carey you bonehead, and The Bodyguard was I Will Always Love You, and just SHUT UP and let me off this hellwagon!” before throwing a shoe through the back window, or if it was just me, I’m not sure. The conversation then pootled on through punk, Britpop, early Bowie vs late Bowie, Glastonbury experiences, how exactly one should categorise Talking Heads, and then, just outside Lewes, ended up on John Peel.

“I loved John Peel,” said TM.

“So did I,” said YFM.

“SO DID EVERYBODY” the bus silently screamed back. “Plus, he’s dead now, so we all obviously think we loved him even more than we really did.”

We pulled into Brighton. Tweed Man and Young Fellamelad moved on to a pub to discuss music some more. What have we learned here, kids? That rail replacement buses make my nerves a little fraught. And that Talking Heads can’t be categorised, and that is no bad thing.
   
*Replacement bus services are another topic altogether. Why is there always a screaming baby and somebody who’s drunk? At 10am? Always?

In which everybody needs good neighbours.

Printed 08/04/10.

The other morning as I walked up my road on the way to the bus stop, a woman pulled up in her car and stopped me. “Excuse me,” she said. “Do you live here?”

Nervous that she had outed me as a North London fraud, and was about to declare that I wouldn’t know a superfood smoothie if it bit me on my non-yoga-ed arse then send me packing back to the suburban homestead from whence I came, I said, “Yes. Yes I do.”

“Which road do you live on?” she demanded.

“This one. In that house there. The red one with the Carlsberg can in the plant pot.” I realised shortly after the words left my mouth that I’d just disobeyed the first childhood key rule of successfully being alive; namely Don’t Tell Strangers Where You Live. I don’t remember the picture books ever including an extended section on Not Pointing Out Your Exact House To Strangers When It Is Apparent You Have Just Left It, but then kids aren’t that stupid. Had she offered me sweets I probably would have taken them too.

“And do you find the area safe?” she asked. Aha! Brilliant. This wasn’t, then, the world’s least surreptitious burglary, but in fact an invite to my favourite activity: raving about how great my neighbourhood is. I am a Highgate evangelist. I an wax lyrical for hours about its leafiness, comparative quiet and abundance of good pubs, friendly dogwalkers and families who look like refugees from a Boden catalogue. I even have a special speech prepared for people who think London is hostile and impersonal, all about how the corner-shop staff know our names and sometimes I wave at people in the street, just for the heck of it.

“Yes!” I told her. “Yes, it is safe! It’s safe and peaceful and full of lovely, lovely people. I’ve lived here for three years and never witnessed any crime, ever! I walk back home at 4am and don’t even flinch if a fox jumps out! I mean, sure I hold my keys through my knuckles, but that’s just he accessory of the modern woman isn’t it? The only hostility you get round here is maybe if you recycle the wrong sort of Tetrapack. AND my neighbours who I’ve never even met sent me a birthday card! Move here! Move here! Move here!”

The lady thanked me and retreated before I could whip out my pom poms and my Rah Rah Highgate sandwich board. But that very afternoon the universe laughed in the face of my enthusiasm, and I BECAME A VICTIM OF CRIME. Suddenly my lovely neighbourhood went from Balamory to the Bronx. What’s more, it was one of the bitterest crimes of all: I was scammed by children. In Starbucks.

Being the generous-spirited person I am (and having just spent a shameful amount on a hazlenut soy ponceaccino), when big-eyed children came to my table asking to be sponsored on a 5k run, I gave them a whole fiver, fresh from my overdraft. For three minutes I felt the warm, fuzzy glow of philanthropy. Then a wiser woman than I noticed it was an odd time for charity collecting, being 3pm on a Thursday afternoon, and suddenly it all got very dramatic as the thieving ragamuffins were confronted by a doubtful herd of yummy mummies, Cath Kidston bags a-swinging. They shrieked, the kids ran, I sobbed quietly into a biscotti.

But now, worse than the loss of the fiver, I am haunted by the knowledge that I told a woman to buy a house here. I practically turned her into the hands of Fagin's gang. Let's just hope she's not duped as easily as I am – or that she really was a burglar in the first place.