In which I find my Olympic event

The thing about the Olympics is, they’re basically all about sport.

All of it. Sporty, sportsmanlike, sporting… sport. Cutting edge investigative journalism this may not be, but watching the gas companies and soft drinks brands and laughably lardy burger chains bend over backwards to try and associate themselves with fitness over the last few months, I’ve finally realised why I feel like a kid with its nose pressed up against the window of a really good party.

I can’t do sport. And by ‘do’, I mean perform, understand, and not be picked last in a team for the purposes of. But despite that, I want to be involved. I’m not going to be able to justify crying at the Adidas advert until I’ve felt a genuine spark of sporting endeavor course through my brittle, unfit veins. So I decided the best option (short of starting my Make Eurovision As Massive As The Olympics And See How Everyone Else Likes It Campaign) was to forget about the incredible feats of human achievement that I can’t participate in, and start thinking about the ones that I can. For example:  

Enormous hair
As a nation, we do enormous hair brilliantly. From Elizabeth I via Maggie Thatcher and Leo Sayer to Adele and the late Amy Winehouse, Britain specialises in barnets you can rest a pint on and hide a chinchilla in. Those of us not blessed with voluminous follicles have taken on nature, and conquered it - all we need is a can of industrial strength dry shampoo, a comb and a dream. That’s stamina and determination I can contribute to. I mean, I would if I could fit my head through the door.  

Picnicking
While there’s little chance of me covering myself in glory on track or field, there’s plenty of chance I’ll cover myself in pastry crumbs while sitting in a field. So I’ll take picnicking to new levels. I’ll walk around armed with M&S sausage rolls, a rug and a posh bottle of elderflower cordial every day for the month of August, and host impromptu picnics wherever possible. On the bus. In the Primark changing room queue. Gold medal standard picnicking.  

Spot the sexism
Now I think about it, if I had got my act together sooner I could have volunteered myself for Chief Sexism Spotter at the Games, marching around with a clipboard yelling “I CALL BULLSHIT” at every obvious inequality. Because there’s a veritable buffet cart of them rolling around at the moment. First I’d start with every TV presenter, newspaper and other douchebag who publicly whinged at the news beach volleyball players would be playing in trousers instead of bikinis if the weather was too cold, then move onto the Australian and Japanese authorities who flew their male teams in first class while the (more successful) women’s teams sat in economy.  

Appreciating the opening ceremony
A fleet of flying Mary Poppins descending from the sky to fight Voldemort? I plan to appreciate the heck out of the opening ceremony.

Street Harassment FAQs: an imaginary conversation

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Sorry, what was that?

Hello, gorgeous.

Yes I thought so. Would you like the middle finger with accompanying eyeroll, or a clumsy expletive? I’m might have a more eloquent speech jotted down somewhere in my bag if you can hang on a minute?

But it’s a compliment!

Is it, though? Is it actually? As @Blonde_M excellently put it in this post, a true compliment is intended to make the recipient feel good – not the giver feel powerful. Did you say it with my feelings in mind?

Honestly, it was meant as a compliment

Ok, fine. But what made you think you should pay it in the first place? You don’t know me. I’m not in a pageant. I’m not being officially presented at the Ambassador’s Ball. I’m just on the Northern Line, biting a hangnail. I’ve got a bit of lunch down my top. Did I look like I was fishing for compliments?

Well, you’re a girl…

Ah, of course! I’m a girl. I’d stupidly forgotten for a minute. But yep, there they are – the steady throb of my baby-hungry ovaries, the whirring cogs of the part of my brain still trying to figure out the offside rule, and, most importantly, my urgent gnawing need to be evaluated and approved by every male I have the good fortune to pass on the street.

Are you being sarcastic?

Maybe.

So you’re saying you DON’T want us to compliment you?

Most of the time, honestly, no I don’t. I have friends for that. And family. And a talking Ken doll from the mid-90s. If it means not having to feel like I’m being scrutinised and rated out of 10 every time I leave the house, I’ll happily forgo the odd stranger telling me I look hot, thanks.

But isn’t it nice to get a surprise compliment from a stranger?

Well, yes – this is a tricky one, because it can be lovely. A lady at a bus stop once told me I had incredible skin, and I walked around like one big beaming epidermis for the rest of the day. But I think that’s because, like all truly great compliments, it was no-strings. She didn’t expect anything in return (or at least, she didn’t hang around leering, so I assumed she didn’t). She just wanted to say a nice thing.

But what if, y’know… it isn’t no-strings?

What’s that? You mean, if you see a comely lady and want to tell her she’s purdy in the hope she might agree to kiss you on the mouth?

Something like that

Well, first I feel it’s only fair to warn you that the chances of successfully pulling anyone you meet on the street are minimal. Teeny. Like your-

ALRIGHT

It’s true though. You can be a perfectly appealing guy, not drooling down your t-shirt or wearing a dirty overcoat or anything, and we’re still likely to back away when you try to hit on us in public. Partly, because it sets off a security alarm in our heads. And partly because, like any ill-judged social interaction, it just makes us cringe.

Sure, everyone likes the idea of meeting the love of their life after they’ve groped your bum outside a corner shop in Kilburn – but life isn’t a fairytale. Sometimes you’ve just got to acknowledge the odds.

But what CAN we say then?

Well. I’m about the employ a massive cliché here, so brace yourself. Ahem. It’s not WHAT you say, it’s the way you say it.

Or at least, that’s partially true. If what you want to say is “Hey baby, suck this” then no amount of warm smiling and non-threatening body language is going to stop us wanting to thwack you in the delicates.

But when you’re treading the fine line between a friendly approach and a sleazy come-on, you just need to make it clear that you’ll retreat without fuss if we want you to. Start small, with a smile. Not a creepy one. See if she smiles back. Learn the signals. If they make a fake phone call to a friend, they’re not interested. If they frown nervously and shuffle away, that’s your cue to quit.

It really isn’t that different from any person who strikes up a chat with any other person at the bus stop, and then won’t piss off when they want to get back to their book – except we have the added fear that you’ll follow us down a dark alleyway and we’ll have to jab our keys in your eye. Nobody likes being harangued.

That’s true. I gave a guy the time once and he ended up sitting with me the whole way from Piccadilly to Cockfosters talking about which waterfowl are native to Britain. It was bloody annoying.

Now imagine he also wanted to have sex with you. Maybe he did want to have sex with you.

That’s a point.

Also good to note: there’s a big difference between complimenting us on something we’ve chosen, like our shoes, and being ‘complimented’ on an intrinsic part of our physicality. Like our arses. “Hey, great hat!” says, “You have brilliant taste. You chose an excellent hat. Congratulations*”, while (and forgive me if there’s a GNVQ out there I haven’t heard of), there’s no expertise involved in growing a nice pair of tits.

Rather than feeling proud, it makes you feel like a piece of meat laid out for inspection. And even if we’ve been classified as prime fillet today, what if we’re scrag end of neck tomorrow? It establishes a system in which we feel we have to look hot all the time. Every day. Just in case there’s a bloke looking.

(*Actually that’s a lie. “Great hat!” usually means “Whoah there! Hat. You’ve got a hat on.”)

So, if in doubt…

Say nothing at all. Yep, ’fraid so. And I hate to break it to you, but nothing catastrophic is going to happen if you DON’T toot your horn at that girl in the sundress. Her day will carry on perfectly well without you shouting ‘Awright sexayyy’ out of the window. If anything it will probably be better.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one day we could just tell women we think they’re beautiful without them feeling scared or objectified or pissed off?

Yes, Men. Yes it would.

(Thanks to @ashleyfryer and the brilliant ladies of AWOT for their inspiration, opinions and lols on this topic.)

How Not To Piss Everyone Off During The Olympics

THEY’RE NEARLY HERE. Advancing with an ever-thunderous momentum like that giant boulder in Indiana Jones, the Olympics are almost upon us. Or to adhere to official style rules (presumably in case any of you bright sparks are scratching your heads and saying “Olympics - does she mean the kebab shop on the high street?”), the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are almost upon us. Now’s the time to get in the mood, to dust off Granny’s javelin from the loft and instigate a few random family drug tests.

But while you chaps settle down and start planning your intercontinental themed buffets from the safety of the south coast, I ask you to spare a thought for us lot in the capital. It won’t be much of a thought, I understand, given our bent to smugness over everything from 24-hour transport to knowing what a macchiato was a full three years before the rest of you, but if ever there was a time to throw a little compassion our way, it’s now.

It’s nearly six years since I threw a few carefree nothings into a knapsack and moved here from Worthing, but (and especially so since discovering my company’s Olympic contingency plan is the skillfully-devised ‘everyone get up earlier’), it’s come to dawn on me that living in London will never have felt MORE like living in London than it is about to feel over the next month.

So here, for our mutual benefit, is a little cheat sheet for everyone coming to visit during the Games.

How Not To Piss Everyone Off During The Olympics:

1.    Walk faster. No, faster than that. And a bit faster. Are you moderately breathless? Is your upper lip moist? There you go! Keep it up. Remember, this is an over-caffeinated city full of people who are paying more rent per month than your car cost entirely. We have angry, sharpened elbows and we’re not afraid to use them.

2.    Spend a little time familiarising yourself with a map. Just enough, say, to realise that Covent Garden and Leicester Square are so close they’re practically the same place and don’t require you to chuff your shopping bags all over the laps of everyone on the Piccadilly Line for ten minutes just to get to Nando’s.

3.    Standing on the right hand side of escalators I don’t need to tell you about, as it’ll have been subliminally transmitted through Boris Johnson’s Head Boy announcements at all major rail stations. But wait – there’s more. If you’re going to brave the lefthand walking side, you better be damned sure you’re prepared to walk. No ambling. No having a little rest halfway. No ooh-look-they’ve-extended-the-run-of-Jersey-Boys. MOVE. If in any doubt, aim to live by the maxim, ‘I may not be in a rush, but the person behind me probably is.’ It’ll save you getting twonked on the head with a rolled up copy of the Metro.

4.    It’s pronounced Theydon Bois, as spelled. None of your faux-French here, Hyacinth Bucket.

5.    Is this Pret A Manger busy? Don’t worry, there’s another one over there. And another one next to that. In fact, like the proverbial turtles, it’s pretty much Pret A Mangers all the way down.

Umbrellas I have known and loved

I have just bought an umbrella. It was a thoroughly stupid decision and I regretted it immediately.

The audacity, that I, who have bought and promptly lost or broken one umbrella every fortnight for the whole of my adult life, should presume that I could suddenly go against the natural order of things, just because this one was nice and flowery and cost £16 from Accessorize. No. I am at the mercy of the Law of Umbrellas and there I shall stay.

The Law of Umbrellas is an especially hard one to work out, as it bears almost no relation to cost or size. Indeed, the bigger an umbrella, the more cumbersome it is, and the more likely your subconscious is to reject it and leave it on a bus. And the more you spend on an umbrella, thinking, "I'll invest in the gold standard of umbrellas! It will be a model of great British craftsmanship and see me through the rest of my days like a faithful whippet",  the more likely it is to turn inside out and snap at the first gusty breeze. If any of you have ever successfully kept and used an umbrella for longer than one season, you deserve some sort of tribute and recognition, like those kids in the local paper who kept their Tamagotchi alive for a year.

The umbrellas that fare best, of course, are the ones you acquire by other means. The ones you find abandoned in the office cloakroom, or borrow off someone and never give back. Those umbrellas stand a better chance because they come with a faint whiff of crime - the two of you are an illicit partnership, living outside the law, doing whatever you can to survive. And by 'survive', I mean 'stay dry' or 'not pop a spoke and get binned before you've even seen Brighton'.

Umbrellas I have known and loved:

'Scottish Granny'

The Look: blue tartan with a floral overlay. Purchased at an Edinburgh newsagents, because it seemed like a slightly subtler option than walking around in a Tam O'Shanter whistling The Proclaimers.
Lifespan: two weeks.
Death: tube abandonment.

Plastic Fantastic'

The Look: a child's brolly, clear plastic with flowers and butterflies on it. I was 15, and thought it was the last word in chic irony.
Lifespan: four weeks.
Death: ruptured plastic, and fickle adolescence.

'Minnie Mouse: parts 1 & 2'

The Look: two red, foldable polka dot umbrellas, owned within a year of each other; purchased under the false belief they made me look vaguely Parisian. OOH LA LA I AM SO CHEERFUL WITH MY POLKA DOTS, NO RAIN CAN FAZE ME.
Lifespan: five weeks; two weeks.
Death: broken spoke; left at the office and never seen again.

'Dark Crusader'

The Look: Black, sturdy, dependable. My most recent brolly, this was stolen from my boyfriend, who in turn had found it on a bus (as Elton John almost wrote, it's the Circle of Brollies and it moves us all) - as such, it was clear that this umbrella was a fighter. To maximise this, I tied it to my handbag, and together, for almost two months, we were an unbeatable duo.
Lifespan: seven weeks.
Death: Left at a friend's house, never bothered retrieving. I bid you well, Dark Crusader. Thanks for all the dry times.

In which not all animals are created equal

I'm not sure how it happened, but I like to imagine that at some point a couple of years ago, the owls got some sort of memo. "Congratulations, you are now trendy" it would read. Or maybe "Cngrts, ur totes hip!", as I don't know how au fait the owl community is with its text speak. Maybe it would be a voicemail of squawks, or a code spelled out in dead mice on a field. Anyway, I just like to think they KNOW their status in the human world.

Because it is really quite something, the owl's reign as Hipster Animal of Choice. For years now, despite some serious competition from penguins, sloths, horses, swallows and giraffes, owls have been the ultimate animal motif. It started with necklaces, earrings and whatnot, then spread to clothes and homeware and stationery and internet memes and desktop backgrounds and possibly, for all I know, people in Dalston buying actual owls as pets to live in their warehouse conversions and deal with the mouse problem.

But why? What makes some animals trendy, the four-legged Alexa Chung equivalent, while other languish at the bottom of the hipster food chain, at best a cozily strokable Holly Willoughby? Take cats. Cats make up roughly 63% of the internet, but despite all their best efforts – using computers, playing instruments, wanting cheeseburgers – they just can’t seem to make it beyond the mainstream.

Dogs have fared slightly better because there are so many novel varieties to coo over. Wrinkly ones! Sausage ones! Ones wearing earrings! But generally, it seems the Hipster Animal needs an allure beyond the common household pet. They need exotic cache.

Where owls are concerned, we can thank the Harry Potter effect of course. Owls assumed magical status, which made everyone think 'owls. Huh. I'd forgotten about owls', and thus their novelty made them the perfect creature to adorn every soft furnishing from here to Timbuktoo. Also, owls are expressive birds, thus easy to write hilarious captions underneath. Plus, they’re nocturnal and so appeal to the average hipster schedule, plus their startling Roy Hodgson resemblance has managed to extend their popularity for several more months (whether Roy Hodgson’s owl resemblance will have the same effect on his career remains to be seen).

Before owls started turning our heads (though not the whole 360°) there were lions, stags, and a brief flirtation with otters. Next up, for Hipster Animal of Choice for A/W’12, I’m taking a punt on flamingos. They’re pink, they’re kitsch, and in their one-legged pose they could be about to launch into One Singular Sensation from A Chorus Line at any moment. If there isn’t already a Flamingos Who Look Like Lionel Blair tumblr. I’m darn well going to make one.

In which everyone gets married and has babies

Marriage and babies! Marriage and babies! When they started billing 2012 as a summer to remember, nobody warned me that the chief sporting activity I'd be forced to sit through would be everyone in the country immediately getting wed and squeezing out an infant.

While the athletes limbered up and the Queen polished her handbag and I awaited the opening of Muswell Hill's new Waitrose with all the zeal of a bloodhound, everyone else has been sprinting towards the finish line of adulthood in white satin slingbacks with a nappy bag over their shoulder.

I'm not making this declaration based on firsthand experience, exactly, but on two nearly-as-stable sources: Facebook, and people I've seen on the tube. I know it's officially wedding season because every weekend morning for the past couple of months, I've shared station platforms with at least three agitated couples in a scratchy-looking array of formalwear. She's pashmina-clad with her fascinator in a shopping bag, he's wearing shoes his mum bought him for a job interview; they've already had three arguments and it's only 11am. Both wear the haunted look of people who are about to see their own future, and pay £70 in train tickets plus a Le Creuset casserole dish for the privilege.

But aside from the passenger-watching, all this nuptial action has left me pondering the really important question: how many of someone’s Facebook wedding photos is it appropriate to look at before you become properly creepy?

I’ve settled on the following scale. Thirty photos is just healthy curiosity, 70 is 'intellectual interest for future dress/table favours/photography business that I may one day start', over 100 is undeniable fascination, over 200 is reaching for popcorn and calling off the day's appointments. And before you know it you sheepishly realise you've flicked through 431 photos of the wedding of two people you've never met, attended by someone you barely know who you met once at a house party in 2007.

So far, you see, it's all been vicarious wedding attendance from the comfort of my laptop - because the tidal wave of wedding and baby action has managed to stop just short of my immediate circle, meaning I haven't been invited to any of it. But that hasn’t stopped me developing a strong set of purely hypothetical wedding opinions (patterned carpet, for example. WHY, when you’ve spent months working to a delicately regimented pastel colour scheme, would you choose a venue with a swirly red carpet? Why do venues even have swirly red carpet? Why does anyone?) and an increasing feeling of hen-party dread in the pit of my stomach.

“We will NEVER do that to each other,” my friends and I announce solemnly, as yet another album of pink tiara-ed pole dancing lessons and erotic pass-the-parcel roll into our news feeds. ‘When our turn comes, we’ll have a nice lunch somewhere. In the countryside. With no body glitter.” But who can really make that promise? Once the starting pistol is fired and my own lot start pegging it towards the gold medal podium of marital bliss, I’m pretty sure the hurdles of reason, taste and ‘but will they really eat a thousand pounds’ worth of cheese?’ are swiftly leapt over without a second thought.

Still. I’d rather the wedding Olympics than real sport, I suppose.

In which the saga continues

I received an ominous message from my flatmates a few weeks ago.

"We thought we should let you know that there has been quite a lot of evidence of a mouse in Tara's bedroom."

I girded myself and took a deep breath. "Oh right," I replied. "What was the evidence?"

"Well. It was an actual mouse."

And so began the ongoing saga I like to call MouseHouse '12, or sometimes Haus of Mouse, to lend the suggestion of camp European costumery to proceedings. It isn't easy to glamourise a rodent infestation, but I believe we must try. Maybe, rather than just indicating slatternly behavior with our toast crumbs, having mice makes us terribly bohemian and we will later reference this period of our lives in a bestselling novel and arthouse movie.

The first thing I have learned about having mice is that everyone in the world has an opinion on how to get rid of them, and not a single one will concur. "Get poison!" says one. "No don't!" says the next. "Buy a sonic repeller!" says one. "They don't work!" declares the next, cheerfully. And it is always cheerfully, because on the whole people quite like hearing other people have worse living situations than their own. It makes them feel better about their rising damp or anaglypta wallpaper.

Some will be reassuring, with tales of how in the end they grew quite fond of their mouse and it ended up a bit like Ben the rat in that Michael Jackson song, but mostly they say things like, "you know their spines turn to liquid and they can squeeze through a hole the size of a pencil?" or, "you never get rid of them. Aunt Agnes found one in her porridge and we had to move house." Gee thanks, The People.

The second thing I have learned is that it's surprising how long you can go without entering your own kitchen, if you really put your mind to it (and buy your dinner in the pub a lot). And the third thing I've learned is that I'm slightly braver than I think I am, but still not nearly brave enough to manoeuvre a dead mouse into a bin bag on my own. Particularly when the dead mouse starts moving halfway through.

I've tried to overcome my fears through a programme of mouse sympathising. I think about Jerry, of Tom and Jerry, and The Rescuers, and Rastamouse. Cute mice. I remember the hamsters of my childhood, who were nothing but fluffier, lazier mice after all - and didn't I love them? Well yes, until they escaped, at which point they instantly transformed from cuddly caged pets to wild, roaming vermin in my 11-year-old eyes. But anyway.

I know in theory that they’re more scared of me than I am of them – but there’s little danger of me trying to climb into their beds, isn’t there? So until my Lovely Mouse Readjustment Programme comes good (still to start on the Angelina Ballerina boxset), I’ll be spending my evenings in Starbucks a lot. Possibly working on the script for that movie.

In which I don't hate football

Ah, football. Football football. Kicking. Goals. Headers. Footers. All of that.

So far, summer 2012 is really delivering. Like a well-choreographed national cabaret, just as the Jubilee ends and we all need something new to get in a tizzy over, the rain reaches biblical proportions, David Cameron leaves his kid in a pub and the Euros begin.

I am not, you might have gauged, a football fan. Aside from a brief stint in year 5 when I borrowed my brother's Adidas t-shirt and started my own girls' football team, The Black Panthers, which after three sessions devolved into a cheerleading squad because we didn't have enough people and didn't know how to play football anyway, the beautiful game and I have kept respectful distance from each other, like awkward relatives at a party.

But I don't hate it. That's the problem. We're not feuding relatives, just relatives who don't quite understand each other and maybe once had a falling out over some egg mayonnaise. I'd like to be more into football. I'd like to watch a game without taking a book along. A few weeks ago, in the role of dutiful girlfriend, I found myself in one of North London's grimmest bars, sat right next to the screen while 50 fans bellowed at me like I was trying to steal their first born. Well, not at me - towards me. But still, it was stressful. I read Middlemarch and had to be placated with a Magnum at half time. 

The first step, of course, would be learning enough to maintain a proper conversation about football that doesn’t end up with me arguing that cotton kits would be so much nicer and less sweaty. At the current moment, I could probably name about 15 players (Steve McManaman still counts, right?) and tell you roughly how well Brighton and Hove Albion are doing based on when I last saw my father cry, but that’s about it.

For several years I got by on borrowing The IT Crowd's catch-all phrase, "the trouble with Arsenal is, they always try to walk it in…", which would produce sufficient nods of acceptance and leave me to retreat peacefully back to my packet of peanuts. But then that wore thin because too many people became familiar with the reference, or Arsenal stopped trying to walk it in (I have no idea which) - and then I was back at square one.

It would be much easier if I just hated football. After all, when people are getting really worked up over a match, I do enjoy cutting in with a quick "you know it's not you on the pitch, right? Just some men you've never met, and probably wouldn't like if you did." But my heart just isn't in it, because in truth I'm a bit jealous. It would be nice to be that passionate about something. As I sat watching the roomful of polyester-kitted men, women and children screaming at the screen, I realised that I hadn’t been that enthusiastic over any result since Will Young won Pop Idol.

But there are upsides to ambivalence. When I do get involved, I sit in a really comfy middle ground where I can be happy if we win, and not care remotely if we lose. It’s quite nice. It saves energy.

‘We scored? Hurrah!’

‘We lost? *blank face* How about this RAIN, eh?’

In which I bring a tender issue out in the open

Do your thighs meet in the middle? If not, then feel free to click on, maybe to a cake blog - though you might like to hang around anyway and take notes for future reference.

If your thighs DO meet in the middle, then welcome, friend! This is a circle of trust. There will be no mocking here; no pointing and laughing. Together, we're going to finally bring a topic out in the open. It's not glamorous or sexy, but it has gone unspoken in society for far too long now and needs to be given a good airing - quite literally, because the topic is inner-thigh rubbing. BOOM. There, I said it.

I remember the first time I ever spoke about my summer affliction. I was 18 (that's 18 years of silent wincing and secret Sudocrem application on beach holidays, folks) and in Paris with two friends for a post A-levels holiday. It was July, it was boiling, and as skint students with a moderate fear of foreign public transport systems, we did loads of walking. Because it was our first time in Paris we'd decided to dress as we imagined people who had cool, romantic encounters in Paris dressed - mainly floral sundresses from Dorothy Perkins - and, it being boiling and the footless tights revolution of '05 yet to kick off, we were bare-legged. 

After about two days of sweaty traipsing round le hotspots touristique, one of us bravely brought it up. I don't remember which one of us it was, but it would have gone a bit like: "Do your… um, I mean… does it hurt when… like, y'know… are your legs a bit… raw?" "YES!" we shrieked back in glee. And then we realised we were normal, and it was a beautiful moment. Even more beautiful was that we solved the problem together by cutting off pairs of nude tights into comfort shorts, and wore them merrily underneath our frocks for the rest of the week. C'est le mode de Britannique, innit?

(other anti-chafing products are available)

Since then, I've been on a mission to bust the taboo. Because like IBS and those single, wiry hairs that start growing out of your neck in your mid-20s, it's something that bloody loads of people experience yet NOBODY TALKS ABOUT. If ever mentioned at all, it's dismissed as the preserve of the Seriously Fat (see: 'chub rub') - not fairly average, size 12-14 legs like mine. Every summer I watch women with thighs no smaller than my own, cheerfully strolling about with legs al fresco, and truly not understand how they're doing it.  "Is it Lanacane?" I want to bellow after them from the ice cream queue, "Or do you have special frictionless skin? How do I get some? ENLIGHTEN ME."

But the most likely truth is that while these ladies are all smiles and freely wafting chiffon on the outside, they're secretly nipping off to the loo every half hour to whack a bit of hand cream on the damage and sit with their legs apart, quietly groaning. If we're all suffering, sisters, then why must we do it in silence? It's possible that the reason our olden-day counterparts always wore stockings wasn't the damned patriarchy, but avoiding an uncomfortable incident on the way to the hat shop.

From time to time though, I'll find myself in a thigh-rub 'safe space' and be able to discuss it openly. My flatmate coined the term 'lady-rubbage' at uni after a particularly chafe-y summer walk, and it has been a source of endless debate and cosmetic experimentation ever since. Is the desirable result, we ponder, dry skin that doesn't grip, or, um, lubed skin that doesn't rub? "Before we ever talked about lady-rubbage, I used to take a little container of talc out with me everywhere," admits another friend. Noted.

Of course, one option is just to keep your tights on for 12 months of the year - and believe me, if body temperature and comments from strangers weren't a consideration, I'd be all over it. But the best solution I've found in recent years is rocking a natty line in brightly coloured cycling shorts under dresses, hopeful that they say 'on-trend 90s revival' rather than 'meaty thighs prone to friction rash'.

Rather than a solution, though, what I'd really like is awareness. Let's all talk about it, girls! Let's get Beyonce on side! Let's make it officially ok to stand up and say, "No, I can't spontaneously climb to the top of that hill because it will rip my inner thighs to shreds. Warn me next time and I'll pack the comfort shorts." Is it really such a leap?

(However, if you're all reading this thinking 'sorry Lauren - it's just you…' then I'd request you kindly move on and we will never speak of this again. Thank you.)

A list of things I like to be thankful for when it’s raining

1.   It isn’t hot, therefore I can wear tights.

2.   I can wear tights, therefore no thigh rubbing.

3.   No thigh rubbing, therefore no having to discreetly walk like John Wayne into pub loos.

4.   It is socially acceptable to walk along the street in a semi-foetal position with your head down, swatting at obstacles with a spiky umbrella shield. This is generally my preferred method of walking.

5.  You need a hot chocolate! You MUST HAVE a hot chocolate.

6.   Staring out of bus windows with your iPod in takes on a whole other dimension in the rain. You are suddenly the antagonist in a US teen drama. It is the series finale. There is a mournful indie soundtrack. A single tear rolls down your cheek. END CREDITS.

In which there are too many breast puns to choose from

Those of you who follow these columns (hi, Mum!) will remember that I few months ago I wrote about my training for The MoonWalk - not a mass Michael Jackson tribute, but a half marathon walked in the middle of the night, in a nattily decorated bra. Well, I'm doing it! Literally right now! I mean, not literally literally, but if you could just suspend belief and pretend I'm writing on a small typewriter strapped to my bumbag. I'll concede to a small spoiler and let you know now that I cross the finish line alive, just so you can enjoy the next 400 words without worrying.

11am. I have put whey protein powder in my morning porridge. I am going to walk like a PRO.

11.02am. Do professional walkers exist? Is that a thing?

12.30pm. I have purchased every energy bar and blister product in North London. There's a chance I might be using charity as an excuse for consumerism.

2pm. My walking pal Lizzie and I are finishing off our bras. We have opted for a Worthing-inspired seascape, with waves, boats and a blue ribbon 'seaweed ' trim. In a fit of resourcefulness (and lack of fabric paint), I've used blue eyeshadow to create a dappled sky effect.

8.40pm. We are in a giant tent full of pink. It seems everyone got another memo we didn't. There are pink trousers, pink hoods and pink anoraks everywhere. A band on the stage are playing 50s rock 'n' roll covers, and women are applying temporary glitter tattoos to any available flesh. It's Tit Glastonbury. In a way, I feel I may enjoy this MORE than Glastonbury.

9pm. We have devised MoonWalk Bingo! We get points for spotting the following: a celeb, a lady weeing in the street, an unintentional nipple. If Anneka Rice has a pee behind the tree does a jiggly shake-and-wait, we might win the jackpot.

12.00am. And we're off! We've started! Last weekend's blister is already rubbing, but it's no match for my determination and excessive Nurofen supply.

12.15am. Is it too early to crack open the Percy Pigs?

12.58am. 3 miles! We are still in Hyde Park in the dark, so in the absence of other entertainment I am drawing on my strongest talent - whistling. I whistle my way through In The Mood, to get Lizzie in the mood. I am a one-woman big band. I think she appreciates it. She doesn't hit me, anyway.

1.12am. We are playing 'would you rather?' Every option I can think of involves romantic shenanigans with an overweight politician. The game dies quickly.

1.30am. 5 miles! Various onlookers and cheerers-on are positioned along the route, shouting motivating things and waving as we pass by in our bras. Liz and I are now playing a game called 'Supporter or pervert?'

1.35am. A Twitter follower has helpfully pointed out to me that it is possible to be both.

2.32am. 7 miles! We are crossing London Bridge. A 43 bus is going past. If we just hopped on it, we could be at the end of my street in half an hour. Who's going to check?

3.49am. 11 miles! I have reverted to earlier tactics and am whistling the whole of Bohemian Rhapsody. By the time I get to the Galileo Galileos Liz is threatening to slap me, but I'm too committed to stop. 

4.10am. 12 miles! On with the foil blanket. I always thought a foil blanket would make me feel supremely athletic. It doesn't. It makes me feel like a slutty burrito.

4.20am. We've done it! We've ruddy done it! My hips are screaming. I cannot feel my feet. I will NEVER walk anywhere again.

4.27am. I am running for a cab. Running. 

 

In which there is little gain but plenty of pain

Which would you rather read a column about: the mice in our flat, or my recent dental work?

ONLY KIDDING. You're having both.

So last week, I left you on tenterhooks (humour me) as I trotted off to my first dentist appointment in an embarrassing number of years. I'm happy to tell you it was fine. Pleasant, in fact. I've managed to find myself a Lovely Dentist - and not only lovely but award-winning (according to his window stickers), and says nice honest things like, "the cheap metal NHS fillings are actually stronger and better than the expensive white ones. Get those."

I left floating on a cloud of optimism and adult efficiency. I promptly went and changed my address with Natwest, only a year and a half after I moved house. I was on a life-admin roll.

Then before my two-fillings appointment, by way of useful distraction, we’ve gone and got mice in the flat again. Although “gone and got” infers unfair responsibility on our part, when everyone knows that mice simply run inside to escape the rain, and prefer clean houses to dirty ones anyway. Or is that nits, with hair? Anyway. Mice. Still, our ingenious plan to scare them away by having all of our radios on at all times means that I'm learning a lot about bluegrass from Radio 2, so there is always a silver lining.

Back in The Chair of Dental Doom, Lovely Dentist continues in his honest vein, and tells me the injections will be "pretty nasty". 

To try and distract myself, I use my mum's favourite trick: mentally running through all the contestants in a named reality TV show in series order. I start with Strictly. "Lesley Garrett," I say in my head. The drill starts. "Umm, Natasha Kaplinsky". It feels like my tooth is spraying over my mouth. That can't be right, can it? "David Dickinson." Can it? Are tiny bits of tooth going everywhere? "CLAIRE SWEENEY."

Whether there's any pride in being really hard to anaesthetise, I'm not sure - but if there is, please let me say that I took FOUR injections, baby. I'm just that tough. Although by the fourth I'll admit my ability to distinguish pain from 'cold', 'noise' and 'foot cramp' is waning. Am I in pain, or is this just how I feel generally? I start paying disproportionate attention to my lower limbs. Are my feet positioned weird? Should I try to cross them, nonchalantly?

I try to cross them nonchalantly, and in doing so accidentally flinch my top half - which Lovely Dentist interprets as pain and gives me more anaesthetic. Score! So it continues, the drilling and the flinching, until I've reached series 6 and am mentally re-running Heather Small’s cha-cha-cha.

An hour, £50 and some vague, ignorable mutterings about a future root canal later, I’m back in the Mouse House, alone. There are ominous clunkings coming from a cupboard. But I can’t employ my usual tactic of ferocious whistling because the bottom half of my face is completely numb and flopping around like vulcanized rubber. 

“Rachel Stevens, Lisa Snowdon, Tom Chambers!”

The clunking gets louder, and more mouse-in-trap-y.

Onto series 7.

In which another one bites the dust

A mere three and a half months after I declared it one of my new year's resolution, I made a dentist's appointment. And it was painless! I didn't feel a thing - I just picked up the phone, dialled, talked to a receptionist and, y’know, asked them in my politest voice to fix my mouth quite soon please. Job done.

Except it isn't, obviously, because now I have to go to the ruddy thing. I'll admit though, that right now it isn't the thought of the pain that's terrifying me - "they drug you, don't they?” “Yes Lauren” – it’s the lecture I will inevitably get. They’ll ask me when I last went to a dentist, and I’ll cough and mumble something and possibly fabricate a story about living in a remote jungle for half a decade. It will be like the hairdressers, except worse because no matter how straggly and ill-conditioned you allow your ends to get, your hair can never actually hurt you.

They'll ask me if I floss, and I'll have to admit that until very recently I thought flossing was something only Americans did. Like having fridges that make ice and thinking 'gotten' is a proper word. It was a level of dental detail that I just didn't think was expected of us, in real life. I brush twice a day, I don't gargle with Fanta; what more do they want? Do you floss, reader? DO YOU? Oh. Fine. I bet you back up your hardrive too, don't you, Captain Perfecto?

That's how much I know. As a person whose last visit to the dentist was quite possibly undertaken in school uniform (don't judge), I've been out of the oral loop for some time. In a way I've never been in it, because up till now I've never had to have a single thing done to my teeth - no braces, no fillings, no administering of anything other than a sticker and a three-year-old copy of the Reader's Digest to leaf through while my siblings got drilled.
 

Having reached my early twenties with an entirely organically-grown mouth, I'd begun to think, indulgently, that perfect teeth might be my 'thing'. My gimmick. While all the other bits of my body inevitably began to sag and break and disintegrate, perhaps my teeth would stay freakishly strong and healthy. "Phwoar, look at the teeth on that!" passers-by would exclaim when I shuffle past in my twilight years*. My obituary would have a quote: "Lauren's teeth put mine to shame" - Donny Osmond.

But it wasn't to be. In the space of a year I've gone from SuperChops to a person who has to grip down something hard every time she has a mouthful of hot soup. I have a seriously gammy tooth. In the middle of a gammy-tooth-twinge I look like the Psammead from Five Children and It granting a wish, only less hopeful. With more swearing.

So I’m now facing the possibility that every dental problem I didn’t have for the last 24 years might suddenly have appeared en masse now. Still – I’ve got three days till my appointment, during which I intend to floss as if my life depended on it.


*Not to be confused, of course, with my Twilight years, which would be when I grew fangs and started mooning about with angsty werewolves.

In which my panic purchasing goes swimmingly

I have bought a bikini!

As useful purchases go, it's about on a par with me buying a Bunsen burner, a car or a copy of Crime and Punishment in the original Russian. Indeed, a Bunsen burner would bring me infinitely more pleasure, because on a slow evening I could poke things in it and watch them melt.

But nonetheless, I've bought a bikini. It doesn't get an exclamation mark this time; my enthusiasm is already waning and I haven't even tried it on yet. I might not try it on at all, just close my eyes and picture some dental floss wound tightly round a panna cotta. After all, let us remember that a bikini is merely underwear in a trickier fabric. You're just in your scanties in public, there's no getting past it.

You can relax, though - this isn't a body confidence column. I'm not doing a Gok. We don't have to truss my swimwear issues up in a pencil skirt and march it down the middle of the Trafford Centre.

No, instead, I'd like to poke my pen-sword into the wobbly flesh of summer panic purchasing, and watch it slowly deflate. It is only mid-April, and already the sum of my summer panic purchasing is: two pairs of sunglasses, two dresses (one with flamingos on it), one pair of shoes, one swimsuit, one bikini and a detachable sequin collar. For a person, not a cat.

I used to take the opposite approach, of holding out in black opaques and high-necked nun frocks until the last possible moment (August). Then I'd decide that the missing ingredient to transform my summer from a parade of sweaty misery into a Hollister advert is a cheesecloth blouse with apples on it or something, which the shops no longer stock because they've long since moved onto chunky cardigans and mittens.

Now though, I prefer to do a pre-emptive strike. "You want summer, eh, society? Well then SUMMER YOU'LL GET." Then I storm through Primark in a fit of pre-Easter optimism, working to a colour palette of ‘Calippos and crabsticks’, and buy everything that will do up. Then in the following months I work on a basis of incremental upgrade, replacing each item with a similarly disposable one as they break or shrink or get accidentally left on a bus, or as I realise through photographic revelation that they make me look like Miss Piggy doing a Carmen Miranda impression.

Admittedly this year the plan has worked surprisingly well, though mainly because the temperature hasn't gone over 13 degrees for weeks and I've broken out my trusty office hot water bottle. But the bikini is a new frontier. It’s mocking me, silently, from my tights drawer. It knows that my buying a bikini is a new level of kowtowing to summer, like politicians pretending to eat railway station pasties. We both know that I’d rather it was a pair of ankle-length Edwardian knickerbockers, and it would rather I was Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, but we have been thrown together by summer panic purchasing and now must make the best of it.

If worst comes to worst and the weather never improves, I will start a bikini bonfire with my new Bunsen burner and use it to keep warm.

In which Instagrandma won't be quite as cool

Image from geek.com

Facebook has bought Instagram, for $1bn. Your reaction to this statement will be anywhere on a gamut from vein-popping rage to "What's bought what? I was only looking for Parish Pump", but the important thing to know is that lots of people are worried.

Lots of people are worried, of course, because this could just be another step on the path to Facebook owning our actual faces. And with them, every smudge of detail associated with us, from bank details to bra sizes to internet browsing habits. The fear, as far as I can discern from the ragey blogs, is that soon Facebook will be a flashier version of the marauder's map from Harry Potter, telling the world precisely where we are and what we're doing at every possible point in time. Lauren's at work. Lauren's on the bus. Lauren's lingering for free samples in the Selfridges Food Hall. Again.

It also means that those without a Facebook account will likely be forced to get one if they wish to use Instagram. Which I can agree, on principal, is wrong. If I had to sign up to something hateful, like the Daily Mail online, in order to use something wonderful, like the Daily Mail online celeb gossip sidebar, I wouldn't like it either.

But there's also a little part of me that feels it's fair punishment for seasoned Instagrammers to have to mix with us Facebook plebs. Think you're too cool for Facebook? Arrange your social life via traditional, rustic 'phone calls'? Got better things to do than spend an hour stalking the latest addition to People I Went To School With Who Are Now Pregnant? Tough - Mark Zuckerberg has you under his big blue thumb and he's squishing you like a hipster moth.

Frankly, I've always thought Instagram is cheating. The iPhone/Android app, which takes photos and uses fancy filters to make them look instantly retro, arty and cool, has become tool no.1 for convincing others you lead lovely whimsical life. (Of course by using the words 'retro, arty and cool' I've instantly become less so, but one snap with Instagram could turn that around).

Everyone's hot via Instagram. Everyone's bohemian and interesting. Everyone’s on a picnic in the late 60s, with Jane Birkin sparking up Gauloises just out of the frame. It isn't fair. Normal people with normal, un-tinted, un-processed faces just can't expect to compete.

Of course, I only think all this because I don't have Instagram. I don't have it because there is no Instagram for Blackberry, and there is no Instagram for Blackberry, because a Blackberry camera is about as technically proficient as the pinhole cameras one used to make in science lessons. And also, I have food smears on the lens.

So I’m not saying that forcing the app’s 30 million-odd users to upload their lovely whimsically retro pictures through Facebook is a good thing. I’m really not. But just think: no matter how artistically tinted and bohemian and interesting the photo, there will still be a good chance that their Auntie Marge will write something embarrassing underneath it.  And until I get a better phone, this pleases me.

In which I am hungunder

 

Hands up who gave up drinking for Lent? Right, now keep them up if you managed to stick to it. You at the back - yes, 'medicinal' sherry does count. No, Benylin doesn't.

Well done, all four of you! Just three more days and you can go swimming in a lovely gin jacuzzi. And to the rest of you, well done for trying. It's ok, I managed 12 hours of chocolate abstinence before mainlining a tub of Nutella and going "oh crap".

But the reason I ask is that, for me, your 40-day booze-free experiment is a perpetual state of being. It's been over two years now since my body slammed down its final Stone’s ginger wine and said, "No more! From now on nothing stronger than Horlicks shall pass these lips, or ye shall suffer maladies beyond all proportion and feel pukey on the tube." I won't go into it further, because it is boring and usually ends in me weeping over a box of cherry liqueur chocolates. But the gist of it is: me + alcohol = sadface.

Still, I thought that by this point I was comfy with my non-drinking status. For the most part all my friends have stopped looking at me like a war deserter, and I can recite details of Fentiman's entire fizzy pop range to anyone who cares to listen. I save money on drinks, which I then spend on taxis and late night newsagent flapjacks. I feel smug about being healthier, then fill the void left by G&Ts with refined carbohydrates. I get to keep my head when all about me are losing theirs, only possibly not quite in the way Kipling meant.

And as the months have passed I've been surrounded by fewer lost heads, because one by one my friends all seem to be losing their tolerance too. "Yes!" I cry, as another one staggers in with chronic shakes after a glass and a half of Pinot. "Let's all be non-drinkers together! Not drinking is the new drinking! We’ll be tee-TOTALLY COOL."

But then the other day, I realised something: I miss hangovers. I genuinely, sort of, do. Not the pounding head or the dry mouth or the sloshing into a work meeting with a stomach full of Berocca bit, but the camaraderie. The camaraderie and the breakfasts. Oh, the breakfasts.

During the three years I lived in the Highgate House, North London’s premier rodent/student/ugly 70s furniture refuge, we made a tradition of hangover breakfasts. After house parties we would round up all the bodies on the stairs and landings, check their pulses, and march them down to the local brunch spot for eggs Benedict and regret. Photos would be groaned over, salacious gossip dissected, and there was always somebody face down on the table who had to have their food boxed up ‘for later’.

A good hangover was something to be revelled in and crafted. A sofa-duvet here, a well-timed nap there. The license to put anything in a three mile vicinity into your mouth because it just might be what your stomach wants (oh whoops, it wasn’t). There is a certain togetherness in a hangover that you just don’t get from being a bit tired, or, say, having a spot of acid heartburn.

So while I get to be smug with all my saved calories and extra money and sensible nighttime decisions, please rest assured that I am also quite jealous. And will be eating the giant breakfasts anyway.