In which I try not to fall on the Provost.

Printed 10/09/09.

And now, a musical interlude:

“Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, Natwest loves you more than you will know. Woah-oh-oh. Where have you gone, student loo-ooan? A bailiff turns his lonely eyes to you… ooh ooh ooh…”

That was a corrupted Simon and Garfunkel, bought to you this week by the good folks of the higher education system of Great Britain. Because this week, I became a graduate.

(That’s a graduate, not ‘the’ graduate, just to be clear. No well-preserved friends’ mothers have ever tried to seduce me.)

Who would have known, though, that the most difficult bit of the process wouldn’t be the crippling sense of emptiness, the questioning of one’s self-worth, the dogged attempt to get to the champagne table before one’s parents, but in fact, the outfit? I know that when the star feature is a robe, you might think what’s underneath is pretty irrelevant. After all, this is a day of academic glory, not to be belittled by trivial things like hemlines and sequin embellishment! And besides, of all Phillip Green’s archive of fashion-forward design, Topshop have almost certainly never produced anything to be worn with a mortar board.

But I promise you, it’s a sartorial minefield. For starters, there are colours to be considered. When I made the choice, back in my first year, to have a UCL degree instead of a University of London one, little did I know I was actually deciding on a purple hood vs a maroon and cream one (so it was justifiable snobbery). But now I have to co-ordinate with the purple. Black would be the obvious safe choice, if not for the nagging worry that I’ll look like a) a raven, b) teacher from the Bash Street Kids, or c) Professor Snape, while anything brighter than a sensible navy threatens to have you remembered eternally as the ‘wacky’ one who would probably become a yoga teacher, and left off the alumni mailing lists.

Heels prompt another dilemma. Will they undermine your intellectual status? Will they clomp noisily across the stage, making you feel like Florence the prize Freesian in a Cumbrian cattle show? Will you do a Naomi? Of course, these are all irrelevant worries because you will wear them anyway. Because if you don’t, and everyone else does, you’ll be the little squat bundle of fabric in all the photos. This is literal one-upmanship. One-up-a-bit-more-ship. Virginia Woolf probably would have done the same.

* * * * * * * * * *

On our first night on holiday, we found ourselves in the middle of someone else’s romance. Ordinarily this isn’t my favourite place to be (snogging couples on tube escalators have learned to watch the backs of their heads), but when it’s a full-blown proposal, it’s fun to have a front-row seat. So half of St. Ives watched as a plane flew overhead with a banner bearing the legend: “GREG WILL YOU MARRY ME”. Then half of St Ives immediately started looking around for a man running, arms flung wide, up the hill shouting “Yeeeeeees!!”, while every man called Greg in a five-mile radius swiftly pooed themselves.

I, meanwhile, was forced to realise that my grammar fascism didn’t die when Lynne Truss stopped being fashionable. Because while everyone else was cooing about how romantic it was, what a lovely gesture, love is a many splendid thing, etc, etc, I was looking at the grand gesture and thinking ‘Where’s the question mark?’

I mean, seriously. It isn’t a hard rule to grasp – you’re popping the QUESTION dear, the clue is in the name. So while I obviously wish Greg and his future spouse all the happiness in the world, I wouldn’t have blamed him for looking up at that plane and thinking “I’ll marry you when you can punctuate properly, chump”.

* * * * * * * * * *

Exciting gastronomical news of the week: Marks and Spencer are going to start doing Pick’n’Mix! While it’s obviously good that in the absence of Woollies, the nation’s kids aren’t going to have to put their artery-hardening schedule any more, you can’t help wondering how they’re going to posh up the humble penny sweet.

This is not just any foam shrimp. This is a line-caught, organically flavoured, individually aerated foam shrimp…

In which I say 'hey, media, leave them kids alone'.

Printed 27/08/09.

Big news! I don’t know if you’ve heard, and don’t spread it around or anything, but apparently A-levels are, like, totally getting easier. It’s true, I read it somewhere.

Perhaps this is an obvious statement (what would I know, my qualifications are all in whistling and colouring-in), but, er… kids don’t set the exam questions.

There. Hardly an A-grade observation, but I feel it needs to be said. They don’t set the questions, they have no say in the syllabuses, they just potter on and have a go. If they got harder, they’d still potter on and have a go. If they carry on getting easier, they’d still potter on and have a go, but maybe in their pyjamas with their eyes closed.

Either way, and whatever bitter conclusion the grown-ups reach, eternity will still be full of teenagers pottering on and having a go. Some will become lab technicians, some will become nail technicians, and nearly all will at some point drink a bottle of Southern Comfort and be pushed home in a trolley.

Just think of it this way – be they a generation of geniuses or degenerates, the simple fact is that none of them have caused a recession yet. And until they do, in the words of Aristotle: er, shut your faces?

* * * * * * * * * *

With Bravo Family vs Cornwall minus 15 hours and counting, I’ve just arrived home. As I stepped out of the station, I was greeted by a lovely Worthing breeze. “Welcome home!” it seemed to say, in a suitably windy way. But unfortunately, as I’m sure Marilyn would have noted if she’d ever graced our south coast paradise, there is nothing like a Worthing breeze for sending your skirt skywards. And while I’d defend my choice of skirt as definitely keeping me decent at least 86 per cent of the time, knicks-on-show is certainly no way to make a comeback. (Actually, it’s my personal belief that the reason Davison High skirts are made so sturdy and excessive is to protect pupils from unsightly exposure on the seafront).

However, if you think that walking home with my dress round my head might have been a touch peeving, you’d be wrong. Nope, indeed it was gratifying to finally have it confirmed that I have been totally right, all along, to keep wearing black opaque tights for the whole of August. Suddenly the seasonal confusion and heatstroke was worth it. Take that, smug bare-legged non-believers!

No, what was peeving wasn’t the unprecedented bum exposure (when you cried during the opening number of Hairspray the musical, you can no longer feel shame). It was the man who felt the need to pull over, actually pull over, in his car and tell me he’d “had a lovely view”. Grrrrr. GRRRR.

I realise now that my reply should have been, to paraphrase Churchill, something like “Sir, I may have my arse out right now. But in two seconds, I shall be covered again. You, however, will still be a cretinous pig.”

I didn’t, of course. I said something much shorter. But, like my skirt, I think it served its purpose well enough.

* * * * * * * * * *

If the above dig at the Davison uniform seemed in any way resentful, rest assured that a) I really genuinely loved spending my most hormonal years in a sexless sack. It made our secondary education so much less about body dysmorphia and so much more about writing witty poetry in the back of our exercise books. And it was a nice surprise to get to sixth form and discover I had a waist.

And b) I had a chance to make up for it last weekend, when I stumbled across filming for the new St Trinian’s sequel in Liverpool Street Station. Watching Tamsin Egerton, Sarah Harding et al parading in their little mini pinafores made me, in turn, jealous, then wish I hadn’t eaten brownie for breakfast, then yearn for the days of the navy pleated sacks. Once a Davison girl, always a sucker for a heavy cotton cover-all.

In which I work at The Guardian. But not like that.

Printed 21/08/09.

Right, so if I really plan on making this my career, this writing-things-in-the-hope people-will-read-them-as-they’re-wrapping-up-some-broken-crockery, I have to accept the reality of the situation. Which is: that I won’t always be writing good things. Or interesting things. Or things I myself would want to read as I’m wrapping up broken crockery.

Sometimes I will even be responsible for writing the things that really annoy me when other people write them. Which, to compile a quick list in no particular order, is: copious use of the word “”; putting “gate” on the end of things to make them sound newsworthy; copying and pasting people’s Twitter statuses under the guise of cutting-edge modern journalism; and most of all, when Heat, Reveal, Cellulite Weekly and similar publish gripping, earth-wobbling front page headlines like “Cheryl Cole dies!” or “Fern Britton runs away with James Corden!”, then it turns out (after a small-scale checkout dither and £1.40 expenditure) that they actually meant “Cheryl Cole dies… or rather, dyes, her hair a vaguely 14-year-old shade of purple”, and “Fern Britton runs away with James Corden… in charity half-marathon to raise awareness for the victims of unsuccessful celeb workout videos.”

But I can sympathise with this last one. Firstly because it sells magazines. If I see “Peaches’ Pregnancy Horror” on the front of something, I will be buying that it. So will you. And we are both incredibly intelligent people. It could be written on a tramp’s face and I would still be giving him 50p to tell me that Geldof was up the duff (in a dream she had last Thursday).

And secondly, because that kind of exceptional, far-fetched spin is the very kind I’m practising myself at the moment. You see, I’ve finally got a job. And here’s the front cover headline: I am working at The Guardian.
Wow! The Guardian! Job of dreams! Omgzzzz! Well, no. I’ve been bandying around this answer at parties, and found that after the beautiful words have left my mouth, I can last an average of three guilty seconds before I have to open the metaphorical magazine and reveal the rest of the story. Because, to quote an ‘unamed’ gossip writer on the subject of Brad/Jen/Ange-gate, “what we tell is the truth… but there are different versions of the truth…”

Technically, I am working at The Guardian. Theoretically, I am. Which makes people coo and look at me with new respect, like they’ve just found out I can secretly fly. But in reality, I am working at Guardian Professionals, the bit nobody knows exists. I am doing the dullest, worst paid, most tenuously connected-to-journalism job in the whole company. And what’s more, I’m doing it in an entirely different building to the shiny one where the shiny journos live. I will never, unless I hack into her documents folder on the intranet and find something juicy, have the opportunity to befriend Hadley Freeman. I’m the lowest common denominator in my dream workplace. I reckon this is how Ringo felt.

But there are compensations. 1) The free newspaper every day (you know, the one I don’t have a hope in hell of ever being in. That one). 2) The free coffee machine that, as we discovered on Friday, also does hot chocolate. 3) The email address. Which I love so much I’m almost scrawling it on lampposts. Because however badly paid, however tedious, however much of an impostor the job is, it is still much better to be me@the guardian than me@the corner shop in my pyjamas. And that is the truth. Or at least, my version of it.

* * * * * * * * * *

My youngest sibling has just returned from a trip to Romania. I am jealous of this on two counts – firstly, because I have reached the ripe old age of 21 and never been beyond Belgium. And secondly, because he has come back with a new found respect for the fullness of life, and derided Facebook as a waste of time.

Good for him, enlightenment and everything, but the philosophy sits rather at odds with my new life as an employed person. When you work in an office, Facebook is gold. Facebook is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. It’s the affirmation that though you spend your days in a relationship with the font menu and regard a trip the loos as passable excitement, there are still people out there who like you. Or at least, “like” you. And until I get the chance to go to Romania, I think Facebook is as close to a full life as I can muster.

In which time plays a sick joke on me.

Printed 13/08/09.

You may remember (perhaps too vividly) that last week I revealed one of my proudest achievements to date: not having been sick in ten years. During a moment of reflection on the subject the other day, my flatmate pointed out that if I can hold out for just four more months, I will have gone the whole of the noughties without puking. That’s the first decade of the new millennium, entirely without my vomit. Does it get much more exciting?

Actually, it does, because then that set me thinking about the passage of time, and all the mystical questions held therein - specifically, what are we going to call the next decade? Of course the obvious answer is “the tens”. But then the obvious answer for this decade was “the zeros”, and look how well that panned out.“ Noughties” was meant to be the joke option, the term Top Gear and Chris Moyles and Nuts magazine would use while everyone else talked properly. Then what happened? It got bandied about a bit too much, we all forgot it sounded inherently ridiculous, and because apparently the whole nation secretly just wants to live in a big long Carry On movie, it stuck.

So do we have a more exciting option to wheel out in 2010? There’s “the teens”, which would give the decade all the glossy promise of an episode of Skins (and probably deliver something more like The Inbetweeners). But teenagers have enough attention as it is, and personally I’d rather not be reminded of my own dwindling youth every time I have to read the term in a paper.*

Particularly as I’ll be feeling haggard anyway. By being born when I was, I am destined to be perpetually slightly older than the century is – in the 2020s, I’ll be in my 30s, in the 40s, I’ll be in my 50s. It’s just so cruel.

Having our own twenties, however, I am very excited about. But that’s largely because I’m picturing it exactly like the last twenties. I know I’m going to be severely disappointed when the clock strikes 12 at New Year 2019 and people don’t immediately start bobbing their hair and dancing a unison Charleston. We could recreate the whole thing, but take all the bad bits out - gin cocktails for everyone, and nobody needs to die of TB anymore! Then roll on the 40s without war, the 60s without Cliff Richard and the 70s without all the polyester.

And if I can even make it through bootleg vodka, powdered egg and fondue without throwing up, I reckon I should get some sort of medal.

* How the Edwardians handled it I don’t know, but they probably had enough of a time having gout and fighting for women’s votes to fret about what we’d call the coming decade in TV nostalgia shows ninety years later. As it happens they got lucky, and we call it the First World War.

* * * * * * * * * *

Bravo family holiday minus two weeks! De-mould the wetsuits, tape the atlas back together, BUY THE KELLOGS VARIETY PACK! Yes, for everyone who has ever uttered the hasty phrase “make the most of it, this will be my last holiday with you people”, why not share in my bowl of word soup (with a nice slice of hat pie on the side)? Because right now, nothing is more exciting to me than the knowledge that in a fortnight, I will be eating a slightly flat cheese and pickle sandwich, punching each brother in democratic turns, and gazing wistfully at a sea. A sea that, in all honesty, isn’t really distinguishable from the sea we left behind several hundred miles ago, but that isn’t the point. Seeing a new bit of sea is always exciting, as are family holidays, and even more so when you know you aren’t paying for it.

* * * * * * * * * *

This week, I had actually intended to unleash all my built-up anger over the tabloid’s ludicrous treatment of Harriet Harman, and give you all to 700 words of my finest feminist ranting. Instead, I rather ran away with myself on the vomit-decade-naming-charleston-dancing issue. This by no means reflects on my priorities regarding gender equality, but rather on which I can type more easily while watching Mock the Week. I hope Harriet understands.

In which I am a topical invalid.

Printed 06/08/09.

I will do a lot for this column. You know that. I am tirelessly committed to the search for fresh, interesting subject matter, even when it involves great personal sacrifice or physical endurance. In the past, I have donated blood, started a fight with an OAP, and done a whole degree, just to give you lot entertaining things to read about with your Weetabix. But even I didn’t think I was as dedicated as this – yes folks, this week, in the noble name of journalism, I have had swine flu.

Things Swine Flu Has Taught Me

1. People don’t like to believe you really have it.

I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, “Did you ACTUALLY have swine flu, or was it just normal flu?”. And I will say, “well, swine flu is the only strain of flu around at the moment.” Then you’re going to say, “Yeah but was it DEFINITELY swine flu, or did you just guess?”. And I will say, “Well nobody knows DEFINITELY, I just did the Tamiflu quiz and got the right answers. I’m licensed. I am not a flu fraud.” Then you will say, “Shouldn’t you be in bed, quietly groaning, not dancing to Katrina and the Waves and making a sandwich?” And I will cough in your face.

2. Even caring chemists will exploit invalids for money.

I am pretty susceptible to advertising at the best of times – i.e., when I don’t have a sky-high temperature or a little man playing steel drums inside my pre-frontal cortex. So when I staggered into the chemists to claim my Tamiflu, and they started waving loads of other medication in my feverish face, I was powerless to resist. “The Tamiflu will make you sick”, they say, “so you also need these anti-nausea tablets. Then if you take Ibuprofen, that will make you sicker. So you also need this soluble paracetamol.” “Ok, ok, whatever you say, medical healthcare professional. Here’s my debit card…” “Did I mention the Tamiflu can also cause nicotine addiction? So you really need to buy this Nicorette inhaler as well. And maybe this Lily of the Valley bath set, just to be sure.”

3. Tamiflu is the drug of the devil.

One of my proudest achievements in life, one that I’d actually quite like mentioned at my funeral if I expire any time soon, is that I haven’t thrown up in ten years. Ten whole years. I am brilliant at not being sick. Food poisoning, ferry rides, crippling hangovers – I’ve made it through them all without breaking my streak. But with Tamiflu I very, very nearly met my match. Incidentally, if anybody wants an (almost) complete box of the stuff, I’m selling it at a very reasonable price.


So, I hear you’re all up in arms over Jim Davidson’s dissing of Worthing. Before you get all worked up and burst a blood vessel, I’d like to stop you and ask, why? He’s JIM DAVIDSON. Do we want his approval? Do we want him to start holidaying here? Get with it, Worthing – this is like when someone really badly dressed insults your outfit. We should be pleased! He’s the poster boy for bad taste! We have Oscar Wilde’s approval; we can definitely do without Davidson’s.

I could even suggest that anyone who still cares what Davidson thinks must be a sexist, homophobic, borderline racist themselves. But I won’t.

* * * * * * * * * *

Being sofa-bound for four days drives one to extreme lengths of entertainment. During my week of pig-pox, I have done every single quiz on Sporcle.com. I have rearranged my shoes into tidy rows. I have sewn, I have dusted, I have finally thrown away the brown thing in the fridge. And, because laughter is the best medicine, I have revisited MySpace and trawled through pages and pages of old posts from sixth form.
It’s amazing that the internet has effectively fossilised out former selves, like a museum of teenagehood for future study. But while nostalgia is always a great way to kill a Friday night, I hadn’t banked on how depressing it would be to realise that four years ago you were wittier, more interesting, and had much better hair than you do now.

In which I help the aged.

Printed 30/07/09.

This morning, I had a fight with a pensioner. On a bus. An actual fight, not staged for E4 or anything. It wasn’t violent, but it did involve some fairly vigorous finger-waggling and momentary use of an umbrella as a menacing weapon. It was pretty intense. Usually a confrontation-phobe, of the ‘stare intently at your thumbnails until the shouting goes away’ breed, I suddenly morphed into a madly gesticulating Eastenders barmaid-come-Jeremy Kyle guest. There may even have been talk of “respect”.

Perhaps I would have been less forthcoming with the cross-generational rage if I hadn’t had backup, but as it happens, bus arguments are the third most popular form of public diversion in London. It was like the gang warfare in West Side Story, but with fewer pirouettes and split-kicks. I don’t make a habit of verbally attacking the elderly, you understand, but for the record, he totally started it*.

The following is (almost) a direct transcript of the incident, in which the old man shall be known as Fred. “Give me that seat”, says Fred to the woman next to me, on the aisle side. Woman next to me, like a good citizen, gets up to offer her seat. Fred then ignores her, and leans over to me. “YOU”, says Fred, with a jabby finger-point, “should be upstairs!”. “Um, why?” I enquire, the very model of reasonable calm.

“Because you’re YOUNG! Bahhhh! Young people have to go UPSTAIRS!” bellows Fred. “I think you’ll find that’s not actually the rule…” I say, as Fred bellows some more and starts spluttering “Shut your face! You don’t deserve to be sitting down at all, you scrounging, selfish…Upstairs! MOVE!”

“Erm, I’m afraid that’s really quite a lot of tosh, if you’ll pardon my French. I think you’ll find I’m entitled to sit anywhere I like, as long as nobody old, pregnant or disabled needs it…. whereupon, of course, I would give it to them, being as I am a considerate person…”. Fred turns puce and replies with some words that weren’t “tosh”.

I stand my ground. “While you might assume my age means I am insolent, disrespectful and likely to spray-paint rap all over your shopping trolley, I’d like to point out that YOUR age does not entitle you to be rude to innocent travellers. What it entitles you to is ONE seat, and one seat only, and that you have got. Now if you don’t mind, I will continue enjoying mine, until such time as a pregnant, disabled or POLITE elderly person springs up to claim it. Good DAY Sir.” (General angry muttering from both sides of the bus, fade out…)

Bus travel, you see, does not bring out the best in humanity. Or me. Last summer, when I was in the giddy heights of employment and could afford a travelcard, I wrote an article all about Tube Wars. Now that the Northern Line is a mere memory, I realise how lucky I had it. Buses drive good people to the brink of social decency. After Fred got off, to spread sweetness and light among the rest of the travelling public, I sat and fumed all the way from Highbury Corner to Old Street. My index finger really ached from all the waggling. But at least I got to rest it on that nice empty seat next to me.

* Incidentally, the lack of violence was due partly to my being a sweet-natured pacifist, and partly to the fact he had a tattoo and could probably have taken me

* * * * * * * * * *

Finally, because I’m sure the curiosity has been eating you alive for the past 400 words, the second most popular form of public diversion in London is a crying girl in a kebab shop. The first is Boris Johnson trying to tie his own shoelaces.

In which the kids aren't alright.

Printed 21/07/09.

When will we learn our lesson about child stars? Considering the procession of simpering, precocious and increasingly screwed-up junior celebs that have been committed to the hall of fame over the years – from Edward VI via Shirley Temple, to Britney and that crying kid on Britain’s Got Talent – it’s amazing that we continue pushing them into the spotlight. Surely I wasn’t the only one who watched 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi performing at Michael Jackson’s memorial and played a quick game of spot-the-disturbing-irony?

I firmly believe that when it comes to fame, we should be following the usual rule; that anything fairly bad for adults is bound to be significantly worse for children. Like whiskey. Or meth addiction. Or saturated fats. Or pneumonia. When we consider what a touch of celebrity does to fully-developed adults, in the marriage-failing, surgery-abusing, scientology-following, wardrobe-malfunctioning arenas, it seems mightily irresponsible to let kids near the stuff at all. (Though I do realise that implementing an over-18s only policy on fame would mean no age-accurate youth performances in any film or TV show ever again, and admittedly that would be weird. Grease was scary enough.)

But aside from all the rehab and head-shaving potential of child stardom, there are also practicality issues. Scouting a cute kid for one film incurs only minor risks, but what happens when you’re signing them up to do seven? Or more specifically, what happens when the kid, who was a fairly average but endearing actor aged 11, gets progressively less cute and increasingly worse as he gets older, until at 19 he can ruin the biggest-grossing blockbuster of all time by turning out the performance of a damp, and slightly musty, flannel? Yes Daniel Radcliffe, I’m afraid I do mean you.

You know I only ever tell the complete truth, so those of you who haven’t seen it yet will believe me when I say this: he is really, really, bad. Which is a shame (not to mention a waste of 250 million dollars), because the rest of the film is really, really quite good. But I suppose it couldn’t be helped; back in 2000, the casting director wasn’t to know that their perfect Potter would turn out squeaky-voiced, stiff-of-jaw and incapable of expressing any emotion beyond what seems to be a mild bout of IBS.

Similar mistakes were made with Emma Watson of course, but we don’t notice as much because at least she has turned out attractive (if still eminently slappable). But poor Radcliffe has started to look like the creepy supply teacher no-one wants to sit next to on the Geography trip. And that is the sad truth of child stars – even when they’re playing wizards, nobody can actually see into the future. Let’s just hope we’re spared the impromptu eighth installment, Harry Potter and the Padded Cell of Celebrity.

* * * * * * * * * *

This week’s philosophical ponderment, up for reader debate: do I have no social life because of my LoveFilm subscription, or do I have the LoveFilm subscription because I have no social life?
Either way, the pressure to get my thrifty fill from the 30-day free trial has reduced me to hermit status, hell bent on consuming as much visual media as my flatmates and sleep cycle will let me. Remember the days where you had to go to a video shop, actively, on two feet? Were we better people then, or just less educated in the ways of crime fighting, medical procedures and Scarlett Johansson’s midriff? Am I getting scurvy? I’m pretty sure the answers to these questions and more all exist somewhere in Gossip Girl season 2, if I can just find them before they start charging me.

* * * * * * * * * *

I’ve recently had notice from a fan/critic of old, my friend Hannah’s hairdresser, who says that I am using too many long words in these articles. I’m sure he realises it’s just the desperate attempts of a wistful graduate to prove to herself that she did her degree for something other than the Topshop discount. But nonetheless, just for him, here is a selection of very short words: if. Tweak. Glob. Clang. Drab. Zoo. Bop. Antidisestablishmentarianism. Pip pip.

In which an inspector calls.

Printed 15/07/09

Two words to strike fear in the heart of any tenant: Property Inspection.

You join me two hours before Armageddon, sitting in a heap of used Flashwipes, beer cans and fear. It’s particularly scary because this is the first inspection our oh-so-conscientious estate agents have deigned to give us in the whole two years we’ve lived here – which is practically asking us to cover the kitchen in floral bunting and do interesting decoupage on the furniture. It’s like the rental equivalent of teachers asking you to mark your own work. In fact, before news of the inspection was sprung, I think I might have reached a point of such denial I’d forgotten the house isn’t actually ours.

I’ve remembered now, of course. Suddenly, with one sweaty session of Olympic hovering, it’s all come flooding back. The dim memories of meetings, and viewings, and tearily handing over lots of massive cheques, are all becoming rather a lot clearer. As are the recollections of signing things; things that promised not to ruin the house too much. Including: by means of explosives, wrecking balls, exuberant parties or blu-tack.

Really, it makes you question the whole practice of contract-signing. It’s just so easy, too easy, to lie. If all it takes to get myself comfortably housed for a year is to write my name on a piece of paper underneath the words “I agree to be careful with this house. I will disinfect everything once a day, polish the toilet cistern until it shines, submit full references for any unauthorised house guest, and definitely, never, ever, affix any item to the wall, door or any other surface using a form of adhesive putty”, then I’ll be the first one to grab the pen.

If what they actually want is a genuine guarantee that we’ll perpetually treat the house as though we were staying at an uptight auntie’s, they need more than paper and ink. They need lie detectors, retina-scanners, perhaps a 7ft man in a black suit with a headset and a gun. They could make it Endemol’s latest reality TV project, perhaps – a side project to Big Brother, in which the contestants are put in a grubby magnolia-painted Victorian maisonette with 45 packets of blu-tack and must see who can last longest without putting anything on the wall. Gripping viewing as each one in turn cracks under the pressure, is discovered covertly hanging a Scarface poster at three in the morning and promptly evicted.

Yes, blu-tack, let’s face it, is a student compulsion. Maybe real adults can live in a house with acres of empty walls about them and resist the urge. Well done them. But just as a dog must mark his territory with systematic weeing, so the student must paper their domain in novelty postcards, pictures of Bob Marley and photos from that time they sat in a trolley. To demand otherwise is to ask us to go against nature.

So I emplore you, estate agents, have mercy. It’s either lie to you or lie to ourselves, and I know which one TV says is worse.

* * * * * * * * * *

You all deserve an apology. Actually, this extends beyond the Herald readership to the wider world in general, so if you see anyone from beyond the West Sussex coast in the near future, feel free to pass on the sentiment. I’m sorry that last week I wrote about summer. You’d have thought I would have realised the almighty power of my pen, and learned to harness it only for good. But no, I continue to underestimate the correlation between Mr Murphy, Mr Sod, and me.


So I’m sorry I wrote about summer, and it being hot, and everyone doing lovely summery things quickly before the weather ran out. Because then it did run out, didn’t it? I also know, however, that by writing this retraction I am tempting Mr M & Mr S to do an about-turn and bring the sun back. So by Thursday, once again, this will probably be totally irrelevant.

* * * * * * * * * *

I’ve recently had notice from a fan/critic of old, my friend Hannah’s hairdresser, who says that I am using too many long words in these articles. I’m sure he realises it’s just the desperate attempts of a wistful graduate to prove to herself that she did her degree for something other than the Topshop discount. But just for him, here is a selection of very short words: if. Tweak. Glob. Clang. Drab. Zoo. Bop. Antidisestablishmentarianism. Pip pip.

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

Printed 09/07/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

In which Michael Jackson died. We think.

Printed 30/06/09

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

Printed 25/06/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

Printed 18/06/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

Printed 11/06/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

In which I strive to be a slummy mummy.

Printed 10/06/09.

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

The inevitable weary shoe-change took place at 11.45.

In which summer girl doesn't sweat it.

Printed 10.06.09.

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

Assuming you were joking, that is.

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

In which I have no plan, Stan.

Printed 20/05/09.

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

How long is a piece of string?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could be the girl who cried "career".

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

* * * * * * * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

Printed 14/05/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In which I am almost definitely dying.

Printed 07/05/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Printed 30/04/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

In which there is nearly a murder in the library.

Printed 22/04/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Printed 08/04/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In which I am no twit.

Printed 02/04/09.

I like to test myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In which the back of my head finds internet fame.

Printed 27/03/09.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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