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.

The problem with fringes

Disclaimer: What follows is an article entirely about fringes. It features no political bent or biting satirical commentary, it does not address issues of technology, economy or environment, and it will not teach you anything. Except how ruddy hard it is having a fringe.

You may think the topic is irrelevant to you, because you do not have a fringe. But look around you! Look at your spouse or offspring, your colleague, the angry person next to you in Tesco. You're never more than three feet away from a fringe, and each day some 86% of people are affected by fringes, either directly or indirectly. Fringes are all around us.

Having a fringe is, and I am not exaggerating here, almost exactly like having a child. From the moment it enters your life it becomes a constant source of nagging worry - the taming, the training, the tears. Praying it will head in right direction, but knowing it will choose its own path irrespective of your wishes. When you can't see it, you convince yourself it's probably misbehaving, and on the rare occasion that it does exactly what you want it to, there's never anyone around to applaud.

Quite honestly, given my time again, I don't think I'd have one at all.

Image: cosmopolitan.co.uk

They always start off as such a good idea, too. "FRAME YOUR FACE," scream the magazines, and we obediently bedeck our forehead with little hair curtains like a Victorian four poster bed. We imagine we'll peer out winsomely from beneath it like Penelope Tree, or Wednesday Adams, and that it will fall endearingly into our eyes when we're feeling coy.

What we forget, in those crucial minutes in the salon chair, is that we're not in a book or a Woody Allen film, and we never peer winsomely at anything, and that at the slightest bit of rain or humidity our hair turns from a conventional, downward-facing mass of proteins into an extravagant, curling, topiary structure, the likes of which even the most delicate features can't set off. We forget all this. Thus is the deceitful power of the fringe.

Fringes refuse to work with weather. Rain = forehead spaghetti. Wind = Duran Duran bouffant. Heat = HIYA, sweat farm. They exist at their best inside a complete vacuum (which indeed is where I believe most of Zooey Deschanel's filming must take place). Likewise they don't like to cooperate with the rest of the hair, preferring to perch separately on the front of an up-do like a stroppy child at a party.

I have had my current fringe for seven years. Unlike many fringes, it was not the product of an over-zealous hairdresser - I actually cut it in myself, in a fit of teenage scissor stupidity. This means that in the subsequent years, every time I've cursed my fringe (we're talking hourly), I've had no one to blame but myself.

As a result, it's been a sadly abusive relationship. I've hacked it, bleached it, pinned it, moussed it, sprayed it and battered it into submission with straighteners. I've been known to pull out whole clumps as punishment for flicking at an odd angle. And now, I’m ending things once and for all. I’m growing it out.

As 'research' for this column, I asked my boyfriend what his views on my fringe were.

"That bit that goes across your forehead?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I like it."

“Shut up.”

In which things get Pinteresting

I would have written a column about Pinterest sooner, but for the past month I've been too busy staring blankly at an upload box, shouting, "What things do I like? What THINGS do I LIKE?"

Do I like that lamp? Sure, I like that lamp. But do I like-like it? Do I PINTEREST-like it? For the commitment-phobes among us, it has presented a whole new level of uncertainty.

In the way these things always do, Pinterest has turned up unannounced in a life I'd previously thought complete*, and immediately declared itself indispensable. Before Pinterest, what did we do when we had a nice image of a thing and wanted to show it to people? I mean, apart from posting it on all our other digital forums, or showing it the retro way with our hands and mouths? It also has a nifty pun in its name, which immediately endeared it to me (not to mention quickly spawning the flagrant and slightly sweaty-sounding imitation site 'Pinspire').

For the unacquainted, Pinterest.com is the virtual equivalent of covering your school jotter in pictures snipped out of More! magazine. If More! magazine had taken a sharp about-turn and started featuring mainly rural sunsets, trendy bookshelves and cake. Lots of cake.

Image: dressedtoat.wordpress.com

Sold as a (new favourite phrase alert) "curation platform", Pinterest lets you create online pinboards of images that you think are nice, for other people to agree are nice. It can be, in turn, a showroom of expensive things you can't afford, a source of soothing natural wonder and therapeutic uplift, a stellar collection of animals in comedy outfits, or the world's best buffet table. Sadly it can also be 27 pictures of wedding favours with :) written as a caption.

The absolute beauty of it, though, is that you're not being judged on your own photography skills, or cookery skills, or looking-attractive-in-a-cape skills. You're just riding on the back of other people's. It's genius. Those who can, do - those who can't, curate. "Can you cook?" we might ask each other soon on dates, to get the reply, "no, but I'm an excellent curator." Which I suppose, when you think about it, just means "I'm great at doing an M&S shop then hotting it up in a microwave." But anyway.

I'm also hugely in favour of Pinterest because it offers a break for people who aren't so much… how can I put this? 'With the words'. With the rise of Twitter and the continuing rule of Facebook serving to remind us which of our acquaintances can string together and properly punctuate a sentence, and which… well, can’t, it might be nice to let pictures do the talking for a change.

Plus, I like to think of it as a sort of crude window into someone’s brain. Inside your head, is it all cherry blossom and rainbows or sci-fi tattoos and chandeliers made from forks? Mine currently features three pictures of Dolly Parton, a plate of Guinness brownies and a dog wearing a superman cape. Which I’d say is fairly accurate.


*This is clearly a lie. Until someone invents an ‘office slanket’ and they bring back chocolate Pretzel Flipz, my life will never be complete.

Let's get quizzical

I love a good pub quiz. It's surprising, though, that I still enjoy them as a pastime given my appalling track record of success in them of late. I mean, as a general rule of thumb in life, I only like doing things I am moderately good at. This is why I allocate such a generous portion of my time to whistling television theme tunes and making stew, in the place of, say, playing team sports or doing heavy lifting. I'm not usually one for self-development. I'd rather do something I've done umpteen times before and congratulate myself than take up a new challenge and be crap, then a bit sad. You might call this limiting. I call it 'logical'.

But pub quizzes are the exception to my rule. I am blithely optimistic about pub quizzes, like a second-time mother being wheeled into the labour ward. "Maybe this time we'll win!" I say cheerily. Most of these people look a pretty dim, and I've been reading the Metro quite carefully this week. Plus, I had salmon for lunch! We're going to ride that Omega 3 wave all the way to the prize pot, baby." Then three hours later I'm sobbing over a glass of wasabi peas, having discovered I know bupkis about flags of the world, photosynthesis, former barmaids of the Rovers' Return or indeed anything that matters.

Image: burnham-on-sea.com

The pressure of the team name alone is too much. Team names are an opportunity to compensate for your poor performance before you've poorly performed. But over time it gets harder, as the hilarious quiz team names of yesteryear lapse into tedious cliche. 'Universally Challenged' probably got rapturous applause when it was first used by Og and Ug at the Cavemen Arms. Meanwhile, the in-joke that seemed so droll when you wrote it down will become less and less funny each time the quizmaster reads out 'Sorry Tim, Mum says We've Got No Broccoli - seventh place' to a roomful of bemused silence. For uninspiring but solid names, you can always fall back on the old chestnut of inserting 'quiz' into rhyming phrases. Quiz Akabusi. Quiz team-a Aguilera. Bucks Quiz. Quizzee Rascal, to be down with the kids.

At this week's quiz, as always, i really thought things might be different. With a modest team of two, my boyfriend and I perfectly tessellated our opposite areas of expertise (him: politics, geography, transport; me: adverts, confectionary, pop hits of the noughties) and amazingly managed to come in second on the first points recap. Then second again in the second points recap. As we whizz confidently through the picture round and the guess-the-common-theme round, I start silently believing we are somehow going to win. It would be a triumph. There are only two of us, with an average age of 25. We'd go down in history! They'd have to put a special plaque up!

We didn't win. We came seventh. Apparently the rest of Muswell Hill has an encyclopaedic knowledge of racing horses and Frank Carson catchphrases like it's normal. But of course, despite the humiliating defeat, I enjoyed it. We also had a good team name - but I'm not telling you in case you nick it.

In which we are woman, hear us roar

If you're reading this on Thursday - hurrah! It's International Women's Day! Are you wearing your I Love Ladies t-shirt and tooting your party blower? Have you turned to the nearest woman and told them they're incredibly wise/ their fringe looks great/ they've brightened your day through the power of pheromones alone? No? Well do it. Then get stuck into this lot:

Eight Empowering Things to Do Today

1. Get yourself a copy of The Sun* and some felt tips, and spend half an hour fashioning a lovely outfit for the Page Three girl. Give her some supportive underwear, then a nice warm jumper and a directional hairdo and some wellies. Maybe a lab coat. Go crazy.

2. Watch a film full of brilliant women, that doesn't feature Katherine Heigel or a makeover montage. For example: Little Women, where you can whoop enthusiastically at everything Marmee says ("I will not have my girls being silly about boys" WOOP YEAH HOLLERRR) and be inspired by hair-cutting, novel-writing proto feminist Jo, or Steel Magnolias, a film so brimming over with female spirit that Dolly Parton's the friendly neighbourhood hairdresser.

I’d advise against watching the 2008 remake of The Women, however, despite it being a supportive lady lovefest featuring no men whatsoever. It’s just a really shit film.

3. Make yourself an organic facemask using mashed banana and honey, then spread it on a crumpet and eat it instead. Repeat until full.

4. Burn something. You could go old school with a bra if you fancy (pick the scratchy lace one that digs in under the arms, and was clearly engineered by a sadist) or choose anything else debilitating from your wardrobe. Heels that make you do a knock-kneed Bambi walk; boned cocktail dress that you have to unzip in the toilet at hourly intervals so you can get some oxygen back to your extremities; anything that has ever drawn blood. Make a lovely bonfire (complying with local council regulations) then dance round it singing ‘down the patriarchy’ to the tune of your choice.

5. Phone your Mum and ask her to describe your birth in vivid detail, then gasp, sigh and applaud during each bit as appropriate. If you’re face-to-face, throw flowers at her feet and shout ‘Bravo!’ (This is more appropriate for my own mother, of course, but it works on a lesser level for yours).

6. Visit the magazine aisle in WH Smiths and cover each copy of Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Grazia or Nuts with a copy of National Geographic.

7. Compliment an older lady on her elegant, age-appropriate crow’s feet, and follow it up with “D’you know, there’s something of the Helen Mirren about you today?”

8. Learn all the lyrics and dance routine to Sister Suffragettes from Mary Poppins, and perform them in a public place.

*Don't buy it, of course - appropriate one on the bus or something

In which Monday night telly's really going places

(This was written for the good people of Worthing)

Who else is watching The Tube on BBC2?

Not right now, although that would be a mighty coincidence, but on Monday nights with the rest of us*? It's an unlikely contender for communal telly viewing, a ritual usually reserved for big hitters like X-Factor and Question Time, but with its wry look into the world under the underground and ample opportunities to guffaw at the idiocy of other humans, The Tube is almost my new favourite programme.

Of course, I wouldn't have watched it at all were it not for my colossal train geek of a boyfriend, a man for whom riding the length of the Metropolitan Line alone is a dream afternoon's activity. "Look how jolly the staff are!" he says as we watch. "They're so patient and cheerful. What heroes." I don't have the heart to point out that the patient, cheerful, jolly staff are probably the only ones they filmed. But anyway, it’s great.

There are lots of good bits to The Tube - seeing your local station, or even a station you frequent regularly, is exciting (you out-of-towners you just get to shout "Look Bev, Covent Garden - where you had your purse nicked" at 15 minute intervals); Learning mind-fuddling statistics like “every day, 60,000 journeys are made and not paid for”, which you can then recite at the coffee machine and sound knowledgeable; last week’s sequence of commuters who had fallen asleep being woken up at the end of the line and gently herded homewards.

But the best bit of all is seeing seeing fare-dodgers get caught. I, as I’m sure you all do too, love a good bit of comeuppance – especially for petty crimes like not blipping a travelcard. In a way it's our version of America's Cheaters, the show where adulterers are secretly filmed, then pounced on by a camera crew and their raging spouse during an opportune moment. We're as thrilled by an oyster fare evader being stopped and promptly fined as our cousins across the Atlantic are by a trouserless man from Milwaukee screaming "IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK SUE-ANNE" while she beats him over the head with a shoe.

But I know what you’re saying - ‘We don’t live in London, thanks Lauren. Can’t we just talk about Teville Gate some more?’ Well I urge you, watch it anyway. Make your kids watch it. For they, like me, might one day rely on this underground world to get around and earn a living. You don’t want them to turn into one of those tourists who gets the tube for all of 30 seconds between Charing Cross and Embankment, do you? As the late Whitney Houston once sang: teach them well, and let them lead the way. Or read the map.

Plus, after a 10-minute montage of weekend revellers vomiting on the Victoria line, Teville Gate will start to look rather homely.


*By ‘the rest of us’ I naturally mean Twitter, but you can replace as appropriate with your chosen medium of contact: telephone; carrier pigeon; shouting over garden fence.

So you've decided to join Twitter...

Welcome, follower. You might recognise me from such conversations as 'Bah, I don't see the appeal of Twitter at all' and 'Twitter's just people chatting about what they had for breakfast, isn't it?' Forget those now. They never happened.

Hang on, don't I know you IRL? By your blank-faced response to my acronym I'll assume you've not been here long… oh yes, look. Four followers and an egg for an avatar. You haven't.

So you've decided to join Twitter. Congratulations! What finally did it? The masochistic limitations of the character allowance? The way newspapers now just report tweets instead of real quotes? The chance to start over with new people who've never seen your Marbella '08 album? Stephen Fry?

If it's that last point, we'd better warn you now - it's not really *about* Stephen anymore. We've moved on. He has too - he's out of the broken-down lift and everything.

But wait, stay - it's still fun here! Look, here's your official welcome pack. It's got a framed picture of your family, a novelty wrist rest in the shape of that little blue bird, and a catheter, 'for luxury duvet days'. Oh and there were some complimentary biscuits too, but we ate them in 2009 while we were waiting.

Image from www.denverstreetfood.com

So anyway, where've you been? Oh that's right, Facebook. And at work, and spending time in the same room as people whose surname name you know. Well that's all going to change now. You don't need to go out, or do your hair nice. Your personal hygiene levels are about to become a little more theoretical too.

We're a little bit different here, you see - there are a few more semi-political gags, a few less photos of people you went to school with's infant offspring - but you'll adapt pretty quickly. Swap your exclamation marks for CAPITAL LETTERS, that's a good place to start. Oh, and don't waste your finger muscles tweeting at celebrities. You'd be better served screaming pithy replies into a vacuum.

A few things you should know before you begin: 1) contrary to popular opinion, you CAN tweet about what you're eating for breakfast. But only if it has some entertaining merit, and not if it involves wheatgrass. 2) Do not fear hashtags. Think of them as Twitter nutmeg - tasty when sprinkled in moderation, potentially fatal in high doses. 3) Don't brag. Don't even humble-brag. If you must tell someone about your career success/expensive new flat/dinner with the Middletons, try writing it on a napkin followed by lots of exclamation marks, then burning it and throwing the ashes out the window. 4) If you retweet a Follow Friday, somewhere a kitten dies.

What's that? You feel as if nobody's paying attention to anything you're tweeting? Don't worry - that's because they're not. You have four followers and three of them are pornbots. But stick at it! It's going to be a beautiful journey.

You should now be ready to start your life as a Tweeter. Good luck. And remember - if you cock it up, there's always Google +.

If you would like a fun Twitter factsheet featuring guidance from experts including Joey Barton and Tom Watson's intern, please send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the address below.

Romantic things that aren't romantic at all

By the time you’re reading this, St Valentine will have been and gone again for another year, and you’ll be picking up rose petals, or little bits of your heart, from whence they were scattered before trying to remember how to make pancakes.

But as I’m writing this at the beginning of the week (coo-ee, future! How’s that milder weather treating you?) we’re going to have a look at a nice list of romantic things… that really aren’t romantic at all.

Teddies

This shouldn't need to be said, so I'm loath to waste too much page space on it. But if your Valentine is over the age of 14, any form of stuffed toy is tantamount to giving them a note that reads "secretly, I think you are an idiot," wrapped up in a polyester bow. Clintons have lied to you. Wise up.

Valentine's-specific novelty items

This includes World's Best Girlfriend plaques, heart-bedecked kitchenware and anything else with your current relationship status emblazoned across it. Now, we all know you're madly in love and will live happily after f'rever and ever and so this concern needn't bother you in the slightest, but still I ask you to consider: if you break up, will she still be able to get some use out of it?

She’d have to overcome a wave of emotion every time she wore it/drank from it, of course, but when you've spent the princely sum of £14.99 on a trinket, having it burnt in a sacrificial bonfire because it said STACY and GAZ 4EVA across it in glitter just seems like a waste.

Long walks

Get your fleece on! We're going for a long walk somewhere scenic, where we will hold hands and laugh at nothing in particular and kiss as the early evening light glints attractively through branches overhead!

What's that? You've got a blister and your nose is running, and we don't live near a heath or moor so we have to have a romantic walk round the block to Londis? And the couple in front is significantly more attractive and laughing far more at nothing in particular than we are? Oh. Let's go home and eat biscuits.


Slow dancing

Remember slow-dancing? If memory serves, I last did it to the Backstreet Boys at my year seven leavers’ disco. It was the special brand of slow dancing where you stand as far apart from each other as possible while maintaining physical contact – fingertips on shoulders, fingertips on hips – and twelve classmates gather round taking photos on disposable cameras and jeering.

I’m aware another type of slow dancing exists because I’ve seen it on telly, in rom-coms from the 80s and reality TV wedding shows, but so far in my six-odd years of adulthood (or six odd years of adulthood, if you prefer) I’ve never witnessed it with my eyes.


Oysters

We all know about the oyster's supposed aphrodisiac effects (they’re full of zinc, the ‘hey lady, let’s have babies’ mineral, and Casanova reportedly woofed a modest 50 for breakfast of a morning).

But aside from their phlegmy texture and the inevitable chorus of slurping that accompanies them, oysters fail on the romance-o-meter because you must spend the twelve hours afterwards continually assessing your stomach wellbeing in the faint fear you’ve had a dodgy one.

Which, let’s face it, you might already be doing with regards to your date.

In which I launch Operation Creep-be-Gone

I did a good deed the other week. On the scale between replacing the loo roll when you’ve finished it and pulling a child out of the way of a speeding bus shouting “Little Jimmy, nooooo!” then I’ll concede it’s closer to the Andrex end, but still, I felt proud.

My deed was this: I saw a woman, on a busy Euston Road at 6pm, being hounded by a man. He wasn’t being outwardly aggressive, but he was sliming round her like a slug in an overcoat, asking questions and ignoring all clear signals (headphones in, one-word answers, refusal to make eye contact) that she wasn’t interested.

I caught the girl’s eye and mouthed "are you ok?", to which she shook her head. So then I had a decision to make, quickly. To barge in like the Green Cross Code Man and say "STOP, letch! She doesn't want to talk to you. RETREAT," before blasting him with a sonic ray gun, or the alternative; pretend to be her mate.  "There you are!" I cried, launching myself on her (for if I'm going to do a good deed I may as well get a hug out of it). "Hi!" she faked, as I dragged her away. Then we stood together on the pavement miming friendly chat like a couple of am-dram actors, while Slug Man stared, lingered, and eventually slithered off back to his cabbage patch.

She was pretty grateful, or at least acted like she was. "I always attract the weirdos too," I told her, in what I thought at the time was a reassuring manner. Then I disappeared off into the night, swishing my imaginary cape and feeling proud.

Why don't more people do this? Seriously? There must have been 20 people within view and earshot standing nearby, yet nobody else paid the slightest attention. I assume for the same reasons more strangers don't tell you when you have food on your face - because we are all really hermit crabs, and unprecedented human contact is more often than not a big ol' faff.

There's the worry that you're going to get 'involved in something', of course, and I can appreciate that. But nobody's saying you have to leap in with your handbag swinging. Even a stern glance or a calm, disapproving presence could help. A well-timed 'tut' might still go some way to helping these lowlifes learn that harassing us for the simple crime of possessing ovaries is Not Ok.

This isn't necessarily about sisterhood, either. I stopped and rescued her because I've been in her place enough times to know it's awful, and because it makes my blood boil that street harassment is still so commonplace when it ought to have gone the way of the permed mullet. But a bloke could likewise have stopped and rescued her because he's a decent person, and it makes HIS blood boil that street harassment is still so commonplace it ought to have gone the way of the permed mullet.

So let's make this a new thing - street harassment crusaders! Operation Creep-Be-Gone! Bolshy builders, drunk leerers at bus stops, creepy guys who hang around asking you your name at train stations - all beware! For before you know it, a Fake Friend might leap out of the shadows and stop you in your tracks. Who's with me?

(Capes optional)

In which I've done some stuff, but not all of it

I turned 24 this week.

"Oh no!" you're thinking, "She's going to do another column on all the things she has or hasn't achieved in 24 years and how generally ill-informed she is as a barely functioning human adult!"

Well, I'll have you know I'm not. Relax.

I'm pretty relaxed about this birthday, as it happens, because 24 is a complete non-event of an age. It's merely another step on the gradual plodding progression towards my natural, internal age, which I've known for a while now is about 43. I'm far too old by now to be any sort of prodigy, or 'youngest ever' at anything, so that's a lot of pressure off (though the days I spent trying to be the youngest ever person to master Handel's Messiah on a kazoo is frankly time I'll never get back).


 Likewise I'm still far too young to need to have done anything as concrete as legally acquiring a building or other human. I think of this part of your twenties as 'The Meander'. It's nice. If you do something significant then hey, well done you! If not, don't worry - your Mum still sees you as a six year old in a tutu anyway.

Besides, the groaning list of Stuff You Should Have Done By Now can always be balanced out nicely by the Stuff You Didn't Expect To Have Done But Have, which is the more exciting collection by far. So, for 'accumulated some savings', I can swap 'saw Dolly Parton in concert and cried.'  In the place of 'reaching a moderate level of personal fitness', I have 'invented Toblerone porridge and its sequel, Christmas cake porridge'. I may not have married or produced offspring this year, but I did get up at 5am to watch the Royal Wedding in Hyde Park with a lavish picnic, a level of commitment to public cheer that I doubt I'll ever equal again. I didn't think that by the ripe age of 24 I'd have both appeared on and humiliated myself on a TV game show, or met Dave 'Voice of Come Dine With Me' Lamb and told him that his voice made me hungry. They were nice bonuses.

I hadn't banked on reaching my partying peak and progressing to a state of complete, feeble alcohol intolerance by my mid-20s either, and yet it is so. Despite its negative impact on my already-shaky street cred, I like to think that being teetotal so early has freed up a large part of my life that would otherwise be given to weeping into my handbag on Friday mornings while Barbara from accounts hands me a Berocca and tuts. I wouldn't be surprised if my youthful recklessness spontaneously manifests itself in some surprise way instead, like getting a giant tattoo on my face or paying my council tax bill a month late.

By this point the more astute among you will be going, "hang on, she's writing exactly what she said she wasn't going to write about!" And yes, I lied. But we can learn from this. We can learn that when you write a column for nine years, some ideas are going to end up being recycled. Thankfully, I've got exactly a year to think up a new one.

In which The Proclaimers have 487 miles on me.

I've just signed up to walk half a marathon with my friend Liz. For those of you familiar, it's The Moonwalk - not a mass exercise in walking backwards like Michael Jackson, before my father can make the joke, but a nighttime hike through London, wearing nattily decorated bras, to raise money for breast cancer.

I've wanted to do it for years - in equal parts to raise money for breast cancer and because lots of people I like to stalk on Twitter do it. But until I signed up, handed over my registration fee and thought up a hilarious team name (The Worthing Domes, if you'd like to reward us with a few rofls), I hadn't given much thought to the walking-13-miles part of the deal.

I know you're all terribly fit and virtuous people who jog to Eastbourne and back before breakfast, and so to you this won't seem much of a chore, but I'm apprehensive. Actually, my legs, feet and cardiovascular system are apprehensive. My head, meanwhile, is going "Pff, it's walking! How hard can walking possibly be?" while ordering a second slice of pie.

In theory, I can do walking pretty well. I can do it in heels, while holding several full Sainsbury's bags, texting and reading a book, and 85 per cent of the time still not walk into a lamp post. During my short but enthusiastic time as a gym-goer, walking on a treadmill was certainly the thing I was best at. Had walking been a PE subject at Davison, I might have been Games Captain*.


 But since I've had sufficient income to buy a weekly travelcard, walking has become a skill I don't use as standard, but regard as something impressive to be saved for special occasions  - like a Boxing Day stroll down the seafront, where I will repeatedly take deep breaths, do power arms, and sigh "I do LOVE a good walk" to anyone in earshot. The trouble with living in London is (and I'm sorry to anyone reading this in drizzle at a bus stop, having waited 40 minutes for a Stagecoach to High Salvington), we have a lot of transport. Loads. It's not always reliable, of course, but still there's scarcely a journey I make that doesn't have the option of a nice dry bus or tube to save me using my joints for half an hour.

And as having a travelcard means that I've basically prepaid for ALL OF THE TRANSPORT in zones 1-3 for a month, it simply seems bad economy not to entrust my backside to TFL whenever possible. From Euston station, for example, there are two buses that can carry me one stop to the door of my office. It's a distance I could practically forward-roll if required, but still - the buses are there. Right there, calling to me. If anyone from work might see me, I naturally keep on walking out of shame; but if the coast is clear, I'm on that bus quicker than you can s - oop too slow, I've arrived!

So, you understand extent of my challenge. I won't be able to get a bus during the Moonwalk. Or a skateboard, or a piggy back - I know, I've checked the rules. It'll just be me, Liz and my bunions, for 13 miles. My best plan of action, I think, is to try to make it feel as much like Boxing Day as possible, so I'll eat an enormous turkey stuffing sandwich beforehand and sing Slade on the way.


*Provided all conventional sports on the syllabus were removed and replaced with 'sitty downy badminton', at-desk disco dancing and  high-impact backcombing.