I which The Only Way Isn't Worthing

I've just had a very interesting taxi journey, from my parents' house to Worthing station. It went like this:

Driver: "So where are you going?"

Me: "London."

London

Driver: "Why?"

Me. "I live there."

Driver: "Uggh. Why?"

Me. "Um. It's nice?"

Driver: "It's a shithole."

Me: "Oh. Wow. Ok. The WHOLE of London is a shithole?"

Driver: Yes. They need to brick over the whole place and fill it with water."

Me, blinking: "You want to turn our capital city into… a massive pond?"

Driver: "It's a shithole. Why would you live there?"

Me: "The culture? The people? All the, um, STUFF?"

Driver: "Pffffft"

Me: "To get away from people like you?"

Silence.

Me: "I don't think you've been to the right bits, mate."

Driver: "The whole place is a shithole."

Me, in a tiny voice: "You do know that the Queen lives there, right?"

Driver, tapping meter which reads £3.20: "In London, THAT would say twenty quid."

Me: "True. But I wouldn't be in a cab in London. I'd be on a night bus, chatting to a nice wino."

The exchange continued in this fashion until we reached the station, at which point Mr Awful Taxi Driver did not receive a tip.

Worthing

The whole thing got me thinking. We all know I would never speak ill of Worthing (well I would and frequently do, but for the purposes of this article we'll pretend otherwise). It produced my father, housed my grandparents and bred me for a happy decade. It taught me what a 'twitten' is, and how to most effectively play 2p machines. It gave me a hefty two-year crush on Preston from The Ordinary Boys. It helped me appreciate beaches, both with and without sand, more than your average inlander.

But even for the sake of giving Mr Awful Taxi Driver the benefit of the doubt, it's pretty hard to pretend that the town has ever equalled London in terms of culture, interesting people, or nice things to do, eat, see, smell, wear, watch and be (it has better fish and chips, I'll give it that). In fact I've always privately thought that an Essex-style spin on my hometown would have to be called Worthing Is One Of Many Ways - Consider All Options First. It's a great place to grown up, because it inspires you to get out and go somewhere better. My friend the Awful Taxi Driver, it seems would disagree.

"So, you think Worthing isn't a shithole?" I innocently asked him. "It wasn't, but now there's too many of your London types here too," he snarled. "Really?" I said, looking around hopefully for someone with a Whole Foods bag and a Blackberry that I could run towards with my arms open, shrieking "Embrace me, kindred spirit!! Let's compare Oyster cards!".  Alas, none to be found.

My theory on the reason suburban people think they hate London, aside from the obvious excessive Mail/Express reading and general belief that every stranger's just a mugger you haven't met, is that they're thinking of the bits they go to as a tourist. King's Cross. Leicester Square. Oxford Street. Places that ooze with a sort of pungent pedestrian soup. But here's the secret that my angry friend might want to know - nobody LIVES in those places. And when we venture into them, Londoners hate them more than you do. It's the equivalent of someone coming to Worthing, spending an hour at Teville Gate, then going back and telling all their friends it's a shithole.

And you wouldn't like that, now would you?

In which the salad days are over

It's been a bad fortnight for vegetables. They've gone from the friendly, healthgiving, albeit slightly goodie-goodie friends in our fridge to secret killers. Children and salad-dodgers are rejoicing as they're proved right, while every persuasive aeroplane-fork that ever was has hit another obstacle on its journey to oesophagus central. Veg is the new chips, doughnuts and turkey twizzlers. 

I ought to say now that I am writing this on Monday, and you are reading it any time after Thursday. You might be reading this in 2025 after finding it in an attic, in which case I apologise for the hair in my byline. Either way, the point is that you are in the future and I am in the past, and by Thursday you may well know what has caused the E.coli outbreak. From where I'm sitting, all we know is: it isn't cucumbers, and it probably isn't bean sprouts.

Is anybody else disappointed that it isn't bean sprouts? I think I can do without bean sprouts. My stir fries would be slightly bereft of crunch, but that's basically the only blemish I can think of on an otherwise happily bean sprout-free life. And the benefits - virtual elimination of Gillian McKeith's legacy, never again being disappointed because you thought they were noodles but aren't - definitely outweigh it.


Sweet potatoes, now there we would have a problem. I adore sweet potatoes. They are as close to dessert as one can get while still technically eating a vegetable. It amazes me that more seven-year-olds haven't cottoned on to this fact. The clue's in the name, kids - though I should let you know now that the same can't be said of sugar snap peas.

Butternut squash and pumpkin can masquerade as pudding too, with the right culinary know-how (I find syrup usually does it). I'm also hoping it isn't turnips, because then childhood classic The Giant Turnip would suddenly take on a sinister air. In fact, if the perpetrator turns out to be any root vegetable at all then I think our gastronomic landscape will be all the poorer for it.

Carrots I could easily lose from their in-salads-and-stuff role, but never from their delicious-in-cakes cameo appearances. Likewise cauliflower, because no other veg lends itself quite so well to snuggling down under a blanket of cheese.

In all, I would like to express a wish now that the culprit be none of the following:

Peas - the vanilla of the veg world, basically impossible to dislike.
Beetroot - exciting despite negative effects on wee.
Aubergine - mm, purple.
Courgette - mm, green.
Leek - what would Wales do?
Mushroom - learning to like them is the official mark of adulthood.
Asparagus - ooh, posh.
Rocket - because I'd miss hearing people pronounce it 'rockay'
Sprouts - because actually liking them lends me some caché.
Tomato - quite obviously the King of Vegetables, despite all this 'actually a fruit' nonsense.

I realise this doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre, so I'm offering up a vegetable as sacrifice: green peppers.

Green peppers are conclusively rubbish. They are lesser versions of their red and yellow sisters, and they taste of grass. They are only used in bad student cooking and by people who don't know you can buy the yellow and red ones individually. I would happily send green peppers to Room 101 forever, if it meant people would stop getting ill and salad could keep its rep.

Keep your pecker up, veg.

In which the water temperature is just fine, thank you.

Those of you who follow this column might remember that I have recently, after an eight-year hiatus, rekindled my relationship with the great British hairdresser. After enduring another mildly nervewracking session in The Chair this afternoon, I have decided to try to capture in print exactly what is is that troubles me so much about the experience.


1) Trying to establish whether or not your hairdresser is a Talker. "They probably don't want to chat," you tell yourself. "They've had a long day, perhaps they'd like to be alone with their thoughts for an hour or two. Why should I bombard them with my blather? Why do we have to fake a friendship based entirely on serum and why my fringe flicks upward on some days and downward on others? Let's both just BE for a while."

Then after four silent minutes, the pressure gets to you. You remember all the cosy, women's mag articles you've read about a hairdresser being a girl's best friend, confidante, therapist and mother all in one, and you feel inadequate. Maybe they do want to chat, it's just that they've judged you unchattable-to. WHY can't you chat? You are a person, with thoughts, and things - why shouldn't you share them with this nice stranger? Particularly when the nice stranger is holding scissors menacingly close to your jugular.

So you grope desperately for something to say. You can't ask them about holidays, obviously, because that's a massive cliche and would probably offend them. "Just because I'm a hairdresser," they might reply, "it doesn't mean I spend all my time getting in a tizzy over package deals to Marbella. Talk to me about voting reform, or Proust, for God's sake."
 
"Um," you say. "It looks like it might rain."

2) The repeated enquiries about whether you're happy with the water temperature. Nobody in the history of hairdressing has ever had a problem with the water temperature, And if you did, the blistering skin or blue lips would tip them off without you having to say.

3) Staring at your own face in a mirror under fluorescent light for upwards of two hours while your hair is placed in unnatural parting arrangements, making one look like one's mother in her secondary school photo.

4) Needing the toilet but not being sure if you're 'allowed' to go with a head full of foils.

5) When they ask you how you like your hair blow-dried, and the only answer you can think to produce is "err.. until it's dry?"

6) When they ask you if you would like to purchase some of the products used on you today. Your mouth says "Ooh, not today but maybe next time" while your face says "wonder if they sell it in Savers?"

7) When the hairdresser asks you, smoothing your beautifully coiffed new do into a style that demands swishy exhibition, what you are doing that night. Because obviously, you must be going out tonight. You're a hip young thing, and you've just spent an eye watering sum on having somebody preen you. So telling the truth, that you're going to spend it on the sofa steadily eating your way through a packet of chocolate Hobnobs, feels like failing your hairdresser. They will look at you in the mirror with sad eyes and think "My art! For what?"

So lie. At least tell them you're going on a hen night, or something.

In which I work pretty hard to preserve my public image.

To be printed 26/05/11.

It's a Hobson's Choice, this super-injunction lark. Or Sophie's, depending on your mental back catalogue.

Thus far, what have we learned? We've learned: adultery = bad. Lying about adultery = really bad. Covering up adultery to save face under guise of protecting family = a whole heap of bad. But gossip-fuelled tabloids = also bad. And society feeding on misdeeds of people we've never met = a crock of bad. And freedom of speech via social media = (can be) a big ol' puddle of bad.

But never mind the fact that my lifelong crush on a certain footballer has been dashed under the weight of all this badness (I had a poster of a topless he-who-shall-not-be-named on my bedroom wall as a nine year old. My Dad thought it was inappropriate. In hindsight, it was) or that we'll never be able to look at Jemima Khan's lovely face without seeing an erroneous, gurning Clarkson. No, the reason it stings so much is because, being mere mortals without a special legal fund tucked away in the toilet tank,  we're left out of all the fun.

So in between gorging myself silly on the Daily Mail's Right-Hand Column of Doom, I've spent the last couple of days imagining what it would be like if normal people could have a go at super-injunctioning.

In reality, of course, it would be a gigantic, Owellian, humanity-defying mess. But in my head, it's actually a darned tempting idea. Rather than bought with the tainted riches of over-amorous footballers and politicians (I'm genuinely surprised nobody has yet tried to use 'I misloved' as a defence), we could give super-injunctions as special rewards to the deserving, like house points, to mop up any inoffensive but mildly embarrassing messiness in their past.

For a start, I'd have taken out more than a handful of super-injunctions against my friends. With a nifty little legal procedure I could have covered the tracks of high school humiliation that would be dished up in front of boyfriends, colleagues and family for years to come. I'd have super-injunctioned the time I swore that Tory was short for the Conservatory Party. I'd totally have gagged the time I ate a half-finished piece of cheesecake that I found abandoned on a ferry. I could wipe out everything I wore between 2002 and 2007 with a blanket photo ban.

I'd virtually erase the time I fell over on stage while playing the Angel Gabriel, aged 15. And I'd definitely have super-injunctioned myself for the time I texted "Don't tell anyone because I swore I'd keep it a secret, but Perpetua is pregnant", then accidentally sent it to Perpetua*. You get the idea.

Serious pondering and a quick straw poll of my most humiliating misdemeanours on Facebook has led me to compile the following list of deeds I'd super-injunction the hell out of. 

In no particular order: the time I ate an entire Tesco family trifle in one sitting; the time I lost a shoe under a train at West Worthing station and ended up on the train, school-bound and shoeless; the time I was sent home to change on the first day of my restaurant receptionist job because my dress was unsuitable; the time I thought I could see England from the top of the Eiffel Tower; the time I ate a fingerful of orange scum from the edge of a saucepan believing it was butternut squash; the time I was taken to A&E in the midst of an anxiety attack but still refused to wear flat shoes; the time I asked if Australians call summer 'winter' and vice versa; and the time I ate a piece of half-eaten cheesecake someone had abandoned in a bar. 

That's a different piece of cheesecake from the ferry cheesecake, by the way. One life, two abandoned cheesecakes devoured.

Of course, if my own bountiful list of gaffs is anything to go by, there's a danger it would turn into the sectioning scene in Peep Show - "If you super-injunction me, then so help me GOD I'll super-injunction you back!" etc. But at least nobody influential would ever have to hear about the time I was voted off the Weakest Link for not being able to subtract 26 from 33.

That really happened. Don't tell the tabloids, will you? 


*Names have been changed for entertainment purposes.

In which we should say 'no!' to the hobbling woman

To be printed 19/05/11.

If this column was a Year 9 English essay (and to be honest I'm finding increasingly heard to tell the difference), it would probably start with a sentence like, "The Oxford English Dictionary defines blank as 'blankety blank blank blank'. So that's how I'm going to start today. The Oxford English Dictionary defines shoes as "an external covering for the human foot, usually of leather and consisting of a more or less stiff or heavy sole and a lighter upper part ending a short distance above, at, or below the ankle."

You notice there is no reference to heels in this. Nor to blisters, back problems, adopting a funny, clown-like stilts hobble, or blood. There is no sub-point that lists them also as 'an object to be carried ostentatiously while the owner walks barefoot, usually into a kebab shop.'

I'm feeling particularly sensitive about this issue at the moment, because yesterday I witnessed the worst bunions I have ever seen in my life. It was on the tube, and I was entirely unprepared. They were in flip-flops, but even those they seemed to be bursting to escape from. The lady they belonged to (because they were attached to a pair of human feet, not just perched on a seat reading the Metro) seemed oblivious to my horror, but maybe she's just learned to block out the gawping by now. Her big toe was almost at a 90˚ angle to the rest of her foot. I tried to take a surreptitious photo on my phone, but decided it was just too mean. Plus, I couldn't work out how to turn off the camera noise.

As a result of this encounter, I'm experiencing a fresh wave of bafflement at the women's footwear industry. I, like so many women across this nation and the world, have practised a slavish and occasionally masochistic devotion to Good Shoes for all of my pre-teen, teen and adult life. One of the earliest articles I wrote for this paper, aged 15, was about wearing new shoes 'through the pain' until your feet, and supposedly your common sense, are numb enough to cope.

But for years now, a niggling thought has plagued me. The thought is this: why have women come so far in so many ways, yet still are expected to buy shoes that wound us? We have fought for centuries to prove our rationality and intelligence as equal to men, yet we blow it every Friday night by forcing our feet into podiatric chastity belts.

The thought pipes up every time I see a hobbling girl on a night out, clack-clacking over some uneven terrain with the splayed legs and helpless expression of a baby gazelle. It's every time I pick up a pair of gravity-defying wedges to feel my feet scream "NO! PUT THEM DOWN AND PICK UP SOMETHING WITH SOLE CUSHIONING". It's every time I see pictures of Victoria Beckham at the Royal Wedding. Because the truth VB needed to realised was that when she stepped out in her brutal six-inch Louboutins, nobody was thinking 'Mama looks FIERCE.' No, we were all thinking: pain, pain, pregnant bladder, more pain.

I'd like to say that we should all rise up, clutching our inch-and-a-half Clarks court shoes, and simply refuse to be The Hobbling Girl. We could call ourselves the Female League Against Torturous Shoes (or FLATS for short - literally, for short). But the truth is, I'm probably not going to swear off heels any time soon. I love the aesthetic of a (non-stripperish) heel too much. At least though, my encounter with Bunion Woman has reminded me that we have a choice. A choice, ladies! Crippling shoes do not an evening out defineth. And the Oxford English Dictionary would probably agree with me.

In which Dick Van Dyke was more convincing

You might not have sensed it, but a collective wave of disappointment and anguish ran through the country last week. I'm not talking about the elections. Or the the fact that they've made another series of Two Pints of Lager. I'm talking about the release of the trailer of the most hotly anticipated movie adaptations of the last few years - and what ho! They've butchered it.

It's a horrible thing, when Hollywood ruins a book you love. I'd only just recovered from the artless massacre that was Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, a book that had more influence over my adolescence than Clearasil, magazine flowcharts and Davison's regulation PE knickers put together*. By moving the action into a mixed school, casting a vastly too attractive lead male and making one of the characters inexplicably Welsh, they ruined the magic. I was gutted.

But this time, it'll be more than just me and a handful of 14 year olds that are gutted. Because this time, it's One Day by David Nicholls. Y'know, that one with the orange cover. The one from the tube. And the bus and the train. That one. If you haven't read it, your Mum will have done. The book has sold over a million copies, which means a potential million people will be screaming themselves hoarse at a cinema screen come July.

For the uninitiated, here's the spoiler-free lowdown: Emma and Dexter meet as students and the book traces them over the two decades to come. Dexter is devilishly handsome in a louche, wouldn't-take-home-to-your-granny way, while Emma is EVERY WOMAN. She is pretty but in the most accessible of ways, with proper thighs and an unfortunate haircut. She is from Yorkshire. She has ruddy cheeks. She works in a Mexican restaurant for a large portion of the book. And who fits the description of the chubby, chippy, slightly unkempt Northern girl better than… you've guessed it… Anne Hathaway!

Yes, she of the lily-limbed, angel-faced yank charm. Of COURSE. I mean, she played Jane Austen once. That basically makes her British, doesn't it? And to be fair, where uglying up for a part is concerned, Anne has a resume to rival none - except perhaps Zellweger. Remember The Princess Diaries, where they frizzed her hair out so you didn't know she was pretty? Then there was The Devil Wears Prada, where a shapeless sweater effectively compensated for the couple of stone she didn't bother gaining for the role.

Of course, we've been prepared for months. I've lamented the casting decision, read interviews with Nicholls weakly defending the casting decision ("She's a bit brighter than the Emma in the book"), and lamented it some more. But none of this stopped me wailing at my desk when the trailer made its first appearance online last week. 

So let me say it now - Dear Film People. It isn't hard. Just do what it says in the book. Ok there are time constraints, and some things don't translate well on screen, yada yada. But basically, for the most part, just do what it says in the book.

It works like this: if the book says a character has brown hair, fat arms and a limp, you give them brown hair, fat arms and a limp. The fans go 'yay!', spend lots of money on cinema tickets, dvds and merchandise, and everyone can be happy.

For now, I've got a couple of months to re-read One Day, eek the last droplets of joy from its Hathaway-less pages, and hope. Hope that maybe, if we're lucky, it might be another Bridget Jones. Good luck with your 'ee by gum's, Anne.



*In fact, we maintain to this day that the book was actually supposed to be set in a fictional Davison CE High School for Girls, such was its insight into the friendship-rich, romance-poor world of the teen girl geek.

In which it turns out we're just massive flag-wavers

To be printed 05/05/11.

5.15am. Alarm goes. Snooze.

5.20am. Alarm goes again. Grunt. “This is truly horrible,” I say to Jo, who is not only in my bed but has stolen all of the covers. We get up.

5.30am. Since last night, we have been playing ‘What is Kate Middleton Doing Now?’ The answer has mostly been, ‘probably on the toilet.’

5.40am. I have compiled a last-minute wedding playlist, consisting of White Wedding by Billy Idol, Chapel of Love by the Dixie Cups and I’m Getting Married in the Morning, sung by Tommy Steele. Rose has put her Union Jack socks on.

5.50am. What is Kate Middleton Doing Now? “Groaning quietly while her Mum says ‘Eat a croissant! You’ll feel better! Eat a croissant!’”

6am. We have left.

7am. We are here. Picnic spot located, blankets spread, thermos out, flags acquired.

7.10am. Successful portaloo trip! There was a clean seat, ample loo roll, even hand sanitiser. Am beginning to realise that I may be better suited to massive state occasions than to music festivals. 

7.20am. Tara is unpacking the cheeseboard. They are all British cheeses, naturally. The BBC preamble is in full swing on the giant screens. “I’m surprised Fearne Cotton isn’t on this,” I say.

7.55am. I have just tried to bribe our way onto Japanese TV by offering the cameraman some homemade caramelised onion and feta tart. I was an unashamed tart-tart. It didn’t work.

8.05am. Fearne Cotton has appeared.

8.45am. The sun has made a fleeting appearance! There is blue sky, but not enough to make a pair of sailor’s trousers from. After an extensive assessment of our neighbours we’ve concluded that we definitely have the best picnic here. Nobody else has elderflower cordial, Pimm’s in a plastic Coke bottle and THREE varieties of chocolate chip brioche.

9am. A car is on the screen! A car! A posh, empty car!

9.05am. What is Kate Middleton Doing Now? “Puking.”

9.10am. More sun! Still not enough sky for sailor’s trousers but maybe a fetching gilet. Relentless sun spotting is beginning to make it feel like a Bravo family holiday.

9.15am. The Beckhams! It’s only the bloody Beckhams!

9.25am. “Rowan Williams looks like he has a laboratory under his house,” says Jo.

9.45am. Gleeful anticipation as Matt Baker is allowed to interview David Cameron again. But all on best behaviour, it would seem. Shame.

9.50am. BORIS ALERT.

9.55am. JOHN MAJOR ALERT.

9.56am. John Major alert downgraded to ‘John Major incident’.

10am. The meat is out – scotch eggs, chicken legs, sausages, made by Jo’s heroic Mum, who was up at FOUR to travel from Worthing. What is Kate Middleton Doing Now? “Having a sneaky watch of it all on the telly.”

10.05am. One of our elbows has just been on the BBC. I hope my Granny was watching.

10.10am. William and Harry have made their appearance. Rose is already crying.

10.15am. We have just yelled at a woman for standing up and blocking everyone’s view. “NO LOITERING!” we bellowed. How very British.

10.20am. William and Harry have gone off to ‘a quiet place’ in the Abbey to ‘have a chat’. We suspect they may be deciding to re-enact the last episode of Peep Show, Season 4.

10.26am. Princess Beatrice appears to have come dressed as a lobster. I am waving a flag. I never thought of myself as a flag-waver before, but it seems I am. I am waving my flag like no flag has ever been waved before.

10.30am. What Is Kate Middleton Doing Now? “Flapping her hands in front of her face, while Pippa shouts ‘STOP IT, YOU’RE GOING SHIINY.’”

10.45am. (To the tune of Guys and Dolls) And the people all said, ‘sit down! Sit down you’re blocking the queen! The people all said sit down! Sit down you’re blocking the Queen.’ Etc

10.50am. The bride! The beautiful bride is getting in her car! A collective ovary-swoon ripples across Hyde Park, Britain and The World. Rose cries some more.

10.51am. The sun has come out properly! “Can the Queen pay it to do that?”

10.59am. What is Kate Middleton Doing Now? “Shitting it.”

11am. Showtime.

In which I go upside-down

Printed 28/04/11.

It's nice to discover, at the ripe old age of 23, that I can be a theme park person.

I'd always assumed otherwise. I don't wear practical shoes, I have hair at the floofy end of the scale, and I would sooner staple my eyelids together than be anywhere near anyone who might vomit. The words 'scream if you want to go faster' usually inspire in me only a steadfast desire to stay mute and still (though this no doubt can be blamed as much on Geri Halliwell as any formative incidents at Alton Towers).

So it was after neatly sidestepping all of the above that we found ourselves at Flamingo Land, Yorkshire's premier amusement park that is named after a pink bird. I was promised flamingos, Boyfriend was promised multiple adrenaline highs and the opportunity to take his top off in public.

What Boyfriend didn't realise was that taking someone who hadn't been to a theme park since they were 12, to a theme park, was essentially tantamount to taking a 12-year-old to a theme park.

"Is there a Professor Burp's Bubbleworks?"

"No."

"Will I have to go upside down?"

"Yes."

"Can I buy some pointless tat in the gift shop?"

"If you must."

Matters weren't helped when the operator of our first ride decided to make a racist comment about some other visitors, just before we got on. So alongside general fear, safety concerns and the overall 'rickety charm' look that most of the Flamingo Land rides seem to be going for, I also had, "and a racist is pushing the buttons!" bleating round in my head.

A massive racist! Does that make it less safe? Could the screw loose in his head somehow also make a screw come loose on the tracks? What sort of establishment is this? Do they have a sexist on the ticket booth? A homophobe selling ice creams?

But then all moral indignancy gets pushed out of my head, because it is being hurtled around at eighty million miles an hour on a mock-motorbike. Another fleeting moment of concern arises when, on the log flume, three men have to come out to physically haul the wagon onto the 90º incline (is this a quirky part of the rustic safari-style concept? Nope, the thing just hasn't been serviced since the 70s…) but by this point I have seen a rhino and had a Twister lolly. I am content.

Four more rollercoasters, a drippy fajita and a quid's worth of giddy fun on a 2p machine later, I have also had an epiphany, and begun to understand the appeal of the theme park. It is a place where we celebrate life. We have our appreciation of life tested by entrance fees that could buy a small bungalow in Aberystwyth, hours of dehydrated queuing and regular performances of the World's Worst Parenting by bands of travelling, Stella-touting jesters. It is shaken to its core by repeatedly being asked if you want to buy a photo of yourself with a face that can only be described as 'constipated wind tunnel terror pout'.

But then, THEN, you allow yourself to be flung about like a human ragdoll for thirty seconds believing all the time that you actually might die, and you realise two things: 1) Going upside down is completely awesome, and 2) Life back on the ground is worth hanging on to.

In short, I left with a lot more than promised – I had a new-found respect for the human condition.

I didn't, however, see any flamingos.

In which I know of a lawful impediment

To be printed 21/04/11.

Next weekend, I am going to a wedding. It is not - just to clear up the matter now before you start imagining me far horsier and more secretly double-barrelled than I am - the royal one. It is another wedding. You don't know them.

More interestingly, I don't know them either.

I am going as that ever-mysterious and alluring figure, the plus-one. I've always wanted to be a plus one. Partly because it means my company is valued highly by a loved one in the areas of dancing, eating posh food and giving witty commentary on people's hats, but mainly because it means I can spend the whole day trying out variations on my hilarious "oh, I'm just here for the booze" line.

Never having met either of the happy couple puts me lower than the catering staff in terms of relevance to the occasion, but about on par with them in potential to ruin it. There's a whole catalogue of potential faux pas that I'm trying to identify and quash before the big day.

For example I probably shouldn't, I'm guessing, catch the bouquet. This would be better left to someone with a little more claim to the honour, such as a friend who has endured months of bridezilla behaviour and wants revenge. Or the weeping, lipstick-smeared unfortunate in the corner of the dancefloor singing It Should Have Been Me. Besides, I'd go swiftly from mysterious plus one to bonafide stranger, next to a boyfriend-shaped hole in the marquee wall. Not a plan.

I also shouldn't, as a general rule, pull focus from the bride. Nobody should of course, but at least if it's her cousin that turns up in a gold lamé catsuit and three-foot stuffed vulture headpiece it can be bitched about at years of family functions, rather than lamented in photos with a bitter "Who was that?" "Some hag nobody knew."

But as a normal human being, of course my main fear is that I'm going to scream something inappropriate at the top of my lungs during the ceremony. We all harbour this fear, the fear of Sudden Uncontrollable Public Screaming (or SUPS) - anytime we're in a church, or meeting, or school assembly or other generally quiet and non-screamy occasion, a tiny voice in the back of our minds asks "what would happen if I stood up now and yelled something obscene?" It's the same voice that wonders about jumping off railway bridges or spontaneously dumping ketchup down a stranger's white blouse.

"It would be bad," you tell the voice. Because you are sane, and normal. "Yes, it would be bad." replies the voice. "It would be very bad. Let's picture just how bad that would be." And in the midst of the spiralling disaster scenes playing out across our minds, we convince ourselves that we are definitely going to do it. We are going to scream the obscene thing.

So when it comes to the "If any person here present knows of any lawful impediment" bit, despite all my best efforts to be poised and charming and avoid the boyfriend-shaped wall hole, I fear the urge to scream, "BECAUSE HE LOVES MEEE, AND ALSO KILLED THAT MAN THAT TIME" is just going to be too strong. But it's ok, I'm only there for the booze.

And just think of all the colossally dreadful SUPS people will be battling to surpress during the royal one. Good luck, Beckhams. Hold it in.

In which I officially launch Crotchwatch

Another fashion piece, written last year:

Rules are made to be broken, that’s how the old adage goes. And so it normally is in fashion, where rules like ‘blue and green should never be seen’ and ‘steer clear of horizontal stripes’ have been broken with such regularity that they now exist only in quaint 1930s books and the occasional WI meeting.

We start kicking against clothing regulations early on in life with school uniform, rolling our waistbands over and making our ties short and stubby as a low-maintenance way of sticking it to the Man.

Then later it all becomes a bit more relevant, when we stop earning house points and start earning style points. Fashion rules are thrown at us from all directions, each with the promise it will deliver that magical word, “flattering” (and those even more magical ones, “thin”, “young” and “almost a bit like Scarlett Johansson”).

I say they’re thrown from all directions, but of course it’s largely whatever direction Trinny and Susannah happen to have been standing in – though they’ve fallen off the radar in recent years, to this day I still hear them shrieking “Deep Vs! Three-quarter sleeves! Put DOWN the polo neck!” every time I go shopping.

But this is all a very round-about way of bringing up a delicate topic. Which is, not to beat around the, um, bush or anything: crotches. Crotches seem suddenly to have risen to new prominence in our society, and I think they need attention. No, hang on, the ISSUE needs attention. The crotches need as little attention as possible.

The problem began about four years back, when leggings made their triumphant return to our wardrobes. It was an unlikely lycra renaissance for a generation who remember our mums in them not so long ago, but leggings managed to be one of the most dominant trends of the noughties. Their appeal was based, initially, on coverage; thicker than tights, we could wear long tops as ‘dresses’ and pelmets as ‘skirts’ without shame of reproof. They were the get-out-of-slutty-free card. And they were warm to boot.

But their service to us was part of a fashion deal – to avoid making the same mistakes our mothers did, leggings had to be worn with more caution this time round. The unspoken rule, or at least so I understood it, was this: we had to keep the crotch covered at all times. Whether with tunics, dresses, shorts or skirts, leggings had to stay layered beneath things. It just made good sense. I thought we were all agreed.

Apparently not. For all of a sudden, across the nation, hemlines are rising and crotches are emerging. People are wearing leggings with t-shirts. With blouses. With cropped tops even. Whether it’s deliberate fashion anarchy or just that everybody has forgotten the rule, I’m not sure. Or perhaps it’s because, in these times of recessionista thrift, we can now pass off three millimetres of clingy spandex as “trousers”, like they used to make birthday cakes out of hat boxes in the war. Perhaps.

Either way, I feel something needs to be said. It’s one of those rare looks that is as unappealing on short and tall, curvy and skinny alike. Not that I’m electing myself as the anti-crotch front, running around the streets handing out aprons to protect women’s dignity – if the crotch-bearing is a conscious act, I have no right to interfere.

But somehow I don’t think it IS conscious. I think something has wandered off course somewhere in the grand scheme of trend development, and we need to get it back on course. So I’m going to say it once more, in a very loud, clear voice, and then sit back and hope it takes some effect. Ahem . PUT. THE CROTCHES. AWAY.

(I’d like to apologise for the number of times I’ve had to use the word ‘crotch’ in this article. But it could have been worse. At least I never said ‘cameltoe’)

In which I explain the paraphernalia of womanhood

To be printed 14/04/2011.

I am about to make a sweeping generalisation. I always avoid sweeping generalisations*, but for the purposes of this article we're going to assume that the following statement is fact: women have lots of stuff.

We thrive on 'things'.

Not necessarily from an innate inclination to hoard (I like to believe both genders have equal propensity to end up crazed bric-a-brac collectors, eventually dying in a pile of their cack), but because the simple act of being a woman in our society tends to require equipment.

Some of us see it as battle armour, some like Mary Poppins' carpet bag full of magical tricks, while more of us are just continually baffled by the sheer amount of indispensable gubbins we've managed to accumulate. "I don't even BUY this stuff!" we cry, as things fall on our heads from cupboards. But despite frequent attempts of declutter and downsize, the things always creep back into our lives.

In accordance, our bags have evolved from little velveteen pouches for love notes, snuff boxes and other trinkets, to holdalls you can cart a child round in. We've become pack ponies, hauling around our collected life's purchases just so that if anyone happens to have a funny tummy twinge, we can be eternally poised with a Gaviscon.


And while for the most part, we understand the vague original purpose of our things, for outsiders it can be a confusing world. So here, for the uninitiated, is my cheat's sheet to the things – or what I like to call 'the paraphernalia of womanhood':

1. Kirby grips

Women have a special place to keep kirby grips, and that is the floor. Despite buying approximately eight million of the little metal buggers in our lifetimes, we will only ever have about four on the go at once - and all of these we will procure when needed from our bedroom carpets. Despite all attempts to tame them, to keep them in little purses and designated boxes, the truth is that kirby grips just need to roam free.

2. Lip balm

In the interests of thorough journalism, I have googled 'Do women's lips get dryer than men's?' but it hasn't returned any results. So we must venture on uninformed, to learn about the female attachment to lipbalm. It's a particular trademark of my generation, I think, the need to be in a state of permanent lip lubrication. When we were 14, my pals and I carried around so many tubes of sparkly, cake-flavoured goop in our pencil cases that we could line them up the entire length of the desk during English lessons.

Meanwhile in adulthood, we favour balms that make our lips tingle to the point of pain, signifying that they're "doing us good." We have them littered about our rooms, our desks and our person in case of a sandpaper attack - and if none is to be found, we can always resort to a greasy sausage roll.

3. Safety pins

In every woman's life, there will be at least five occasions where her clothes will fail her. Straps will break, seams will rip, garments will cease to perform their proper function and leave her indecently exposed. This is when the surprise presence of a safety pin is so glorious we could cry.

But be warned: they do not always remain where we put them. Safety pins are fickle creatures and love to disappear just when we need them most. Which is probably why Liz Hurley wore a tribute to them down the red carpet – she knew it would pay off to get them on her side.

4. Tampons

It's the obvious one, and despite all the men going spontaneously blind and shaky right now, it must be covered. They are the ultimate womanly accoutrement. The savvy female has them stashed in every conceivable outlet; the unsavvy female must beg them from strangers. We are fiercely loyal to brand and style - if you want to cause a proper ruckus in a group of women, simply ask "applicator or non-applicator?" and wait for the feathers to fly (throw in a Mooncup fan and you've got a civil war on your hands).

And despite only needing them once a month, we stockpile like it's going out of fashion. "Might as well buy another box," we think when we find ourselves in the aisle. "You never know." You never know what? An entire rugby team with bloody noses might stop by and need plugging up?


*This is also a sweeping generalisation.

In which I won't be dressing to the max

Written last year, but sadly still applicable now.

For about the last five years or so, I have considered any skirt or dress that reaches as far as my knees to be deeply unflattering. Or at least, deeply unflattering on me. On other people they might be elegant, chic, sexy even. But on me, I instantly look like someone dressed as a mum for a school play.
Being top-heavy, my legs are my slimmest part and therefore the bit I want to get out at every opportunity. It deflects from my bulkier bits up top, like wearing a subtle sign that says, “Just so you know, I’m not built like a tank the whole way down.”

So I’ve spent a draughty five years pushing the boundaries of hemline decency. Every dress has been shortened, then shortened even more the next year. My tights have got more and more opaque to compensate, my heels lower and tops more voluminous to balance out the harlot potential. It has been a long work in progress, but finally I’ve found a look that works for me. Hurrah.

The snag, of course, is that saying you’ve “found a look that works for you” is waving a red flag to the fashion bull. It’s like when someone on Eastenders says, “this is going to be the best Christmas we’ve ever had.” As soon as the words leave your lips, a flashing alarm goes off somewhere thousands of miles away, in a big control room, where I like to picture Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld and Alexa Chung all sitting round in massive leather chairs. “Lauren Bravo’s found a look that works for her!” They cry. “Quick, make fashion do the opposite!” And so, summer 2010 became the summer of the maxi dress.

Maxis have been creeping up (or down) on us for years, but up to now I’ve been able to ignore it, dismiss it as a micro trend that will never catch on because Brit girls like to flash the flesh too much. But not so, it seems. Everywhere you look this season, women are flapping about in acres of fabric. And, more distressing, most of them look good. They’re elegant, chic, sexy even.

There is a crucial ‘most’ in the above sentence, though, and that is the deceptive secret of the maxi – it DOESN’T WORK ON EVERYONE. For starters, they cover up a significant portion of our bodies, leaving us only with arms and décolletage on show. Which is great if arms and décolletage happen to be your best bits, but how many of us claim that? And how many of us, alternatively, spend entire August afternoons sweating it out in inappropriate jackets so that nobody sees our bingo wings?
Then there’s the maxi’s lack of shape. This can be a blessing – skimming over your hips and thighs, providing ample coverage for a belly full of fried calamari – or a curse – making you look like someone of indeterminate gender hiding in a shower curtain.

And then there’s the lack of accommodation for, um, ample chests. The vast majority of maxis come in two styles – ruched bandeau or triangle halterneck. Neither are friends to any bosom bigger than a C-cup, with the former looking a bit like two puppies in a sack, and the latter presenting the age old dilemma of cavernous cleavage vs wearing a prudish camisole underneath. And I do not approve of clothes than necessitate extra things worn underneath just to protect your modesty.

There’s also the length issue to contend with. Maxi propaganda states that long, wafty dresses can only be worn by long, wafty people; one of those hideously unfair fashion diatribes like ‘only skinny people can wear skinny belts’ (you notice there are no trends named ‘stout and dumpy’). But it’s a rule made for breaking. The secret to pulling off maxi as a shorter lady is picking your shape wisely and being nifty with a needle and thread if need be. Make sure it covers your ankles, but isn’t sweeping the floor, and fits properly up top so you don’t look swamped. Try to find something relatively slim-fit so that you’re not wallowing around in a paisley marquee, and if all else fails, crank up the heels.

But body issues aside, the real key to maxxing it up is deciding on your style. Are you a Grecian goddess (draping, chiffon, upswept hair), a prairie girl (broderie anglais, denim waistcoat, belt), or an urban hippie (straight jersey t-shirt maxi, minimalist sandals, iPhone)? Or will you, like me, be keeping a firm grip on your minis until Anna, Karl and Alexa come round to prise them out of your hands?

Diary of a Domestic Disaster - in which we have a gas leak

To be printed 07/04/11.

Sunday, 2pm

"I can smell gas in the kitchen," I tell my boyfriend. And in an unusual twist of events, it isn't coming from him. But, as I'm prone to neurosis and hungry, I cook some bacon to cover it up.

Sunday, 4pm

I can smell gas again. This time I decide to take matters into my own hands and test it out - so I get the kitchen lighter, hold it at arms length in the direction of the boiler, and light it. Nothing explodes. So it's probably fine. It's fiiiine.

Sunday, 6pm

Flatmates #1 and #2 have both smelled gas in the kitchen too. One smelled it yesterday and one smelled it the day before. I have a headache, which might be the gas but might also be the afternoon I spent eating raw shortbread dough. "It's probably fine," says flatmate. "It's fiiiine."

Sunday, 7pm

I call the National Gas Emergency Helpline. Because I do love a bit of drama, and my headache has got worse, and although the boiler passed my cunning lighter test, it's still probably best that we can go to bed as sure as we ever can be that we won't be blown up in the night.

"We can smell gas," I tell the lady on the end of the phone.

"Turn all electric appliances and lights off. Turn the gas off at the meter. Open all windows and keep pets away," she briskly instructs.

"Oh, but we've been using the hob. And the lights. And the telly's on." I tell her. "So it's probably nothing. It's probably fiiine."

"Someone will be there within an hour," she says.

Sunday, 8pm

The door buzzer goes (now I come to think of it, another thing we're not meant to be using). "THE GAS MAN'S HERE!" I shout. "QUICK, turn the TV and lights off! It'll look like we're not taking it seriously!"

Gas Man charges in. "Where's the gas meter?" he asks. "Ummm," we say. "We don't know. In the cupboard? Or under the sink? Would you like some shortbread?"

Gas Man doesn't want shortbread, but he does want t know where the meter is. In the end it transpires that the meter is in the yard out the back, which must be accessed through the shop downstairs. So for half an hour we sit in front of River Cottage, occasionally shouting "Are you alright down there?" out of the window and muttering "it's probably fiiiine," to each other.

Sunday, 8.30pm

Well whaddya know, we have a gas leak! A bonafide domestic disaster! Everything is not, as previously suspected, fiiiine - our hob is leaking! Had we not called the emergency helpline, we could have ended up a cautionary tale on a safety advert. I have saved everyone's lives!

"I've had a headache all afternoon," I tell Gas Man, knowingly. "Not from this you won't have," he says. "Domestic gas hasn't been toxic for years." Oh.

Sunday, 9pm

Gas Man has turned the gas off. I may have saved everyone's lives, but as a tedious downside I've also left us with no cooker, heating or hot water. The landlord has been called, and told he will need to replace the hob - pronto, before we all freeze and have to resort to wallowing in our own dirt and licking our plates clean then using them again.

We spend several minutes bemoaning all the food that we won't be able to cook, before Gas Man points out that while our hob is gas, our oven is electric. And therefore fine. "Oh," we say. "Of course. We knew that."

Monday, 10am

Three cold showers and an experimental night with a portable hot plate later, the landlord comes to replace the hob. Except it turns out that the hob doesn't need replacing at all, because the leak is being caused by some old food stuck under one of the gas knobs.

"See?" says flatmate. "I knew it would be fiiiine."

In which the general consensus is that a little common census goes a long way

To be printed 31/03/11.

It was much glee that I sat down to fill in my census. I like writing about myself, could you tell? Admittedly I wasn't being paid the princely Herald rate of £15 a week for this one, but still I was relishing the chance for a little self-examination for the benefit of the state.

But here is the thing: I was disappointed that the census wan't MORE invasive. I wanted to be probed, goshdarnit. I wanted it to make me realise things about myself that I never knew I didn't know. Unfortunately, something I already knew I knew was how many bedrooms my flat has. It has three. Next question.

How are the residents of our house related to each other? "Well," I start. "We met in Freshers' Week - you thought I was a loser because I said 'hi' to you in a corridor in a bid to make friends, but then we bonded over a mutual hatred of Ministry of Sound and love of inappropriate footwear and Tottenham Court Road hot dogs. We've lived together ever since, apart from that year you went travelling, which I have largely blocked out of my memory anyway because it was also the year of the Mouse House. We have shared clothes, books, an organic veg box and numerous long nights under blankets watching sitcom boxsets."


"The options," says flatmate, "are husband or wife, same-sex civil partner, partner, son or daughter, step-child, brother or sister, step-brother or step-sister, mother or father, step-mother or step-father, grandchild, grandparent, other relation, or unrelated."

"Oh," I say. "Unrelated."

You see, the truth is that far from being a dazzling excavation of our importance in the intricate meshwork of our society, the census has just made our lives look a bit sad. We are no relation to each other. We have no dependents. We don't own any property, or any vans, or give anybody any care or support.  We've never been married or divorced or in a same-sex civil partnership, and, even for the sake of hilarity, none of us are practising Jedi.

Question 17 is left intentionally blank. This one, obviously, has been thrown in to test us - to filter out the blank among us, if you know what I mean. So I circle it and write "ah, but has it?" in the margin.

How is my health in general? This is a hard one. Specifics I could do. I could fill pages with the intricacies of my dizzy spells, my stomach acid adventures, my neck twinge, my heart flutters, my jippy toe and my grotty tooth. I'd be thrilled to finally tell someone who would listen about how sometimes my kidneys pulsate and my nose goes numb whenever I eat radishes.

But in general? How is my health in general?

I tick 'good'.

In which I get something off my chest.

(I wrote this in 2009, but will continue to unearth it until busty ladies get their dues)

Fashion is fickle. We all know this. Styles flit in and out of favour on the merry-go-round, enjoying their moment of glory then laying low until they can work their way back into our wardrobes. But while most trends, however unlikely, will get dragged into the spotlight at some point or other (hello, jodhpurs), there are some things that will just never quite manage it. Fleeces. Double denim. Nude tights. And, my own particular burden – cleavage.

Cleavage will never be cool. Despite all of Vivienne Westwood’s sterling efforts, no matter how much burlesque devotees try to bring back corseting, however many times Scarlett Johansson bends over in a movie, cleavage will always be the embarrassing auntie of fashion.

Cleavage takes an LBD from a cocktail bar to the Rover’s Return. A couple of cup sizes can be the difference between sexy and slutty, between Carrie Bradshaw and Carry On.

Of course, cleavage has had its champions over the years. Think of Jayne Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It, sashaying her way across that restaurant, her bullet bra leading the way like two guided missiles. But Jayne was about gaudy sex appeal, not style. In an era of elegant icons like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, Mansfield’s extreme proportions were a guilty pleasure.

Likewise, modern day breasts have their celebrity cheerleaders. Of course they’re a varied lot – at the good end of the scale we have Salma Hayek, Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, and the aforementioned Scarlett.

Luscious women who make cleavage look as at home on the red carpet as it does in a Yates’ Wine Lodge. Then there’s the bad end of the spectrum, where we find Jordan, Chantelle Houghton, Victoria Beckham’s gravity-defying melons, and 98 per cent of everyone at the British Soap Awards.

But whether good, bad or ugly, these well-endowed celebs all have something in common: just like their rounded silhouettes, they lack edge. Glamorous, they may be. But trendy? Not really. Ever since Twiggy first found fame, that childlike figure has been synonymous with cool, an antidote to the sexually-charged images of women that ruled the commercial world.

Then what is a chesty gal to do? Dressing big breasts is a constant Hobson’s choice – high collars turn us frumpy, fashioning our assets into a big matronly bosom, while plunging necklines take us into trashy territory quicker that you can say ‘my face is up here’. We can do va-va-voom with our eyes shut, but how about gamine? Boyfriend chic? Layering? It’s a minefield of sartorial no-goes.

Take Holly Willoughby. She’s an exemplar model of how to dress a busty figure, with her Very.co.uk range a treasure chest of flattering deep Vs, sweetheart necks and sturdy tailoring.

But with her wardrobe, Willoughby has resigned herself to being cosy, not cutting edge. She’s settling into her place on the This Morning sofa while Fearne Cotton, her flatter-chested counterpart, gets to run round in the sixties shifts and cement her place in all the trend reports. It just isn’t fair.

The conclusion I’ve come to, after a decade of gaping blouses, straining bodices and getting perilously stuck inside dresses in shop changing rooms, is this: designers are scared of breasts.

They don’t know what to do with them. It isn’t even a skinny/curvy issue, though naturally that plays a part in it. But the truth is that, since the days when Thoroughly Modern Millie lamented the way that only flat-chested girls get their pearls to hang straight, fashion hasn’t catered for anything above a C-cup.

Maybe it’s because an impressive décolletage diverts attention away from the clothes. Cleavage is a scene-stealer, not a blank canvas. There is a glimmer of hope though, in the form of model Lara Stone, who graces the cover of this month’s Vogue.

While her (supposed) 32Ds are still a far cry from my own FFs, it’s the most cleavage the glossies have featured in a long time. As Cornershop once sang, everybody needs a bosom for a pillow. But whether they can reclaim their place in fashion remains to be seen.

In which the Crazy Frog starts signing on

To be printed 24/03/11.

This week, the Office for National Statistics released its inflation shopping basket for 2011. The yearly update is, really, an excellent large-scale version of snooping in other people's trolleys for fun. "Five cans of ready-made gin and tonic, a tube of primula, marigolds and a radish?" you think, picturing said customer comatose in a litter tray, with cheese goo in their hair.

But the difference is that with the nation's shopping basket, every item is a supposed reflection on YOU; not just the weirdos.

First, the good news: fleeces are out! Out of the basket and promptly out of our lives, one can only hope. If ever there was an item that epitomises the inversely proportional relationship between comfort and ugliness inherent in fashion, the fleece is it. Wearing one feels like being gently caressed by a million tiny winged angel sheep, but makes you look like you should be eating piccalilli sandwiches in a bus shelter with someone called Derek. Fleeces be-gone!

Reflecting the ever-expanding leisure pursuits of the nation, both craft kits and massive LCD TVs are in. We can only assume this is so Britain's womenfolk can make scrapbooks of kittens with doily frills round their heads, at the EXACT SAME TIME Kirstie Allsopp is doing it on the telly.

Next, the collective bowel of the nation will be thrilled (or moved?) to hear that dried fruit has been given its own category. As one of the millions of office workers across the country who spends their days woofing fistfuls of raisins and then pondering what would happen if I'd eaten that many grapes, I feel this is a perceptive addition. Potentially they should take it one step further and give 'apparently healthy desk snacks' its own category, including smoothies, rich tea biscuits and anything being sold in the foyer to raise money for charity (generosity negates calories, everyone knows that).

A slightly poignant swap has also taken place this year, as mobile ringtone and wallpaper downloads have been ousted, and replaced by apps. This is probably only poignant for me, as a Blackberry-rather-than-iPhone user, and an app-less one at that. But I will always fondly remember the short period when a musical ringtone was a conscious display of taste and personality, rather than the tinny bleetings of a moron. Back then my ringtone was Brown Eyed Girl and my flatmate had Bad Guys from Bugsy Malone. We were cool, and everybody on every train knew it.


But the basket addition that has pleased me the most is the one that reflects the true cost of romance in 2011: dating website subscriptions. As a proud beneficiary of the phenomenon (at weekends I can be seen at Speakers' Corner waving a flag and shouting "Six months on, he's STILL not robbed me or harvested any of my internal organs!"), I'm glad that the government is recognising its significance.

Currently the standard response when I tell people how I met my boyfriend is a cheery "Great, great. No stigma, no stigma!" but I hope that, with the hypothetical purchase now made on behalf of the whole country, it will also curb the private assumption that we probably both have unsightly boils and dead pets in our beds. We're just nice, average, normal people, using our apps and eating our raisins and crocheting in front of a 32" TV.

But if I discover he owns a fleece, I may have to reconsider his place in the basket.

In which we discover the garden of earthy delights

To be printed 17/03/11.

I get excited by a lot of mundane things in life. Museum gift shops. Rice pudding skin. When the bus pulls up with the doors aligned perfectly in front of me, as though I've personally summoned it. But until last week, I didn't realise I could get so excited by vegetables.

We've started getting an organic veg box.

A few weeks ago, we didn't even known we needed more veg. Or better veg, or veg we'd never heard of. Vegetables were for putting in stir fries, roasting into oblivion, and routinely throwing out once a month after they turned black and oozed liquid over the bottom of the crisper drawer.

The vegetables of studentdom are as follows:

1. Peppers. Cut chunky and plonked on pasta, with distinct bias towards yellow and red because the green ones taste too much of grass.

2. Courgette/aubergine/mushroom. For the hippies and vegetarians.

3. Butternut squash and sweet potato. Because they're a bit like pudding, but as a first course. You can put honey on them.

4. Onions. Shut up, of course they count.

But during the last year and a half, our ascent into proper adulthood has been marked by becoming fully fledged legume-fanciers. And for the true vegetable proficient, or at least one without the space or inclination to grow the ruddy things themselves, the holy grail is the organic veg box. Ours gets delivered by a man named Simon Bear. He wears a fleece. The whole set up couldn't be more rustic if it put on a hessian jerkin and sang Greensleeves.

"The carrots have mud on them!" I found myself squealing. "Look how filthy the potatoes are!" agreed Flatmate. "That's the dirt of deliciousness. Good, proper, expensive, dirt." "I can't believe we spent so long eating CLEAN carrots. Ugh, Tesco, put away your soulless sponge".

It's worth noting, though, that just as there is always more a little more toothpaste in the tube, you will never quite finish all of the veg you buy. The initial rush of "yay veg!" on day one is slowly replaced by "mm, veg" on days two and three, then "sigh, veg" on days four-six and "bah, takeaway" on day seven. Then you throw away the wilting remains with a heavy heart, and the feeling that you're throwing away a tiny bit of forest and some critters. As well as roughly £4.56.

And of course, it's just another phase in the great middle class mission to hijack everything rustic and muddy that the wholesome, ruddy-cheeked salt-of-the-earth poor have been doing forever, like calling their kids after parlourmaids and dipping their chips in some runny egg.

Back in the olden days (yore, yesteryear, days gone hence), as far as I've learned from books and films and The Good Life, vegetables were organic as standard. That was just how they came. But hey, if reverse aspiration is responsible for bringing Swiss chard, so tenderly steamed and buttered, into our lives, then sign me up now and call me Gertrude.

In which I straighten up and fly right

To be printed 10/03/11.

As you read this, I will be two days into a Lent without hair straighteners.

"Ye gads!" you're thinking, "the abstinence! The suffering!"  As frequent followers of this column* will know, I take Lent pretty seriously as an opportunity for self improvement, reflection, and lording it over the weaker individuals who crack and break out the secret fag/cake/Gilbert and Sullivan soundtrack stash on day three.

After years of culinary challenges like chocolate, bread, booze and crisps (the infamous Great Mini Cheddar Debate rattles on to this day), this year I'm turning my attention upwards to my barnet. So 40 days in a metaphorical style desert may not sound like that huge a sacrifice - and in many ways it isn't, being that it will actually give me more time for faffing around of a morning and lessen my chances of third degree ear burns. But it will be a trial, believe me.

My straighteners have been a loyal part of my life since the bleak mire of adolescence. They make my hair bend the right way, rather than flicking the wrong. They calm the daily hints of Flock of Seagulls just dying to burst through. They double up as an iron for the creased lady in a hurry. And there's always the reassuring thought that, if necessity dictated, you could probably use them to cook a steak and chips too.

I can pinpoint the exact moment that straighteners took over our hair - it was autumn 2003. I know this because I can make a flickbook of photos documenting my transition from a schoolgirl wearing a hay bale on her head to a girl wearing a shower curtain on her head. We went on a French residential holiday around the time GHD ceramics were launched (for the uninitiated, they're the Bentley of the straightening world), and one girl in our group was in possession. She was more popular than the girl who snuck in a bottle of peach Archers.

In every photo from that holiday, and every subsequent one until the ceramic started to lose its effect and my split ends started to occupy multiple postcodes, I have the swishiest, shiniest curtain of hair imaginable. I look like a chubbier Penelope Tree. After the initial few months of ceramic magic, straightening becomes like any other addiction - something you just do, without thinking, because not doing it feels wrong.

The crucial thing to understand about hair straightening, you see, is that it is not about making hair straight. Pff, no. Plenty of girls who sport curly or wavy or boofy hair will still rely on them daily. It is about changing your hair from something flicky, fuzzy or generally misguided, in short something that looks like it has spewed forth from the human body, into something that looks like it has been spun on a loom by nymphs.

If we look back to the 80s and 90s, hair wasn't required to perform as hard. True, it had to be enormous, permed, possibly sporting a pink visor or distracting from Tom Selleck's moustache - but it was allowed to be hair, not some sort of follicle fantasy by the Haus of Aniston. For the last decade we've been under a straightening spell, and it's only now that we're finally breaking free. So I put down my straighteners with a heavy mane but a light heart, and hope that by Easter I will be stronger.

Or my ends will be, anyway.



*And I'd like to take this chance to say a grateful "how-doody?" to all three of you.

In which I reveal my man-ifesto

To be printed 23/02/11.

Men of Britain! You're quite lucky to get the following column, because were it not for a few intervening factors (lack of interested publisher, lack of ideas, lack of being arsed) I would almost certainly turn it into a book. But as it is, the following concise little offering is small enough to slip, almost unnoticed, into your life, where it will better it significantly for you and those around you. Put it on your fridge, keep it in your wallet, sleep with it under your pillow. You're welcome.

THINGS EVERY MAN NEEDS TO KNOW

1. Telling a woman that you see in the street to "smile" does not make her want to smile. It makes her want to punch you in the kidneys.

2. Your shoes are more important than you think. However important you think they are, they're more important than that.

3. You cannot buy Nuts magazine ironically.

4. Sex and the City by no means represents what women actually think. But when asked, you must always say your favourite is Carrie. Lie. And don't mention horses.

5. Unless you are called Julio or are attending a fancy dress party as Marti Pellow, you may not have a ponytail. Ever. No exceptions.

6. Definitely is spelled 'definitely'. Not 'definately'. Actually everybody needs to know this one, but now seems as good a time as any to say it.

7. However well meaning your intentions, telling a woman she has a ladder in her tights will never be well received. She probably knows. And even if she doesn't, she isn't about to run home and change. Just keep schtum

8. Do you own a large, short-sleeved shirt? Is it useful for work and breezy in the summer? Do you wear it with jeans to 'smart' clubs? Burn it.

9. The man who dances will earn more points than the man who doesn't, no matter how David Brent the moves are. Girls like dancing with dodgy dancers. It reminds us of our Dads.

10. If you live in Britain, you are only permitted to remove your shirt in public during the months of July and August. And only then if unseasonably warm.

11. No man in the history of the world has ever pulled by calling a girl he doesn't know "gorgeous" in a leery fashion at a bus stop at 11 o'clock in the morning. Your life will be significantly easier once you realise this.

12. Never underestimate the power of a good scarf.

13. Growing your nails long makes you look like a terrifying child catcher from a fairytale. I don't care if it helps you play guitar like Hendrix.

14. The girls you think look great without make up are almost invariably wearing make up.

15. No gift bought in Clintons will ever please anyone. If it does, you are dating an idiot.

16. Put. The hair gel. Down.

17. Periods may not be as painful as being kicked in the crotch. Ok. But you aren't kicked in the crotch once a month for several days for 40-odd years of your life.

18. We are never going to wear stockings on a day to day basis. They chafe. So stop asking.

19. Look at your estate agent. Then wear and do the opposite.

20. If you are a  genuinely nice person, then none of the above matters*.


*This is a massive lie. Learn to recognise those.

In which the postcode always shoots twice

To be printed 17/02/11.

It's the been the funnest online game for grown-ups since Google Street View was launched. Indeed, the next logical step is surely to combine the two, and allow us to find our own house on the map and discover someone robbing it.

Yes, I refer this week to the launch of police.uk, the new online crime map service - otherwise known as shitletsmove.com. A neurotic's gift, the site lets you type in your postcode and find out how many crimes were reported in your area in December. It also breaks them down into different categories, which is helpful, because then you can play your neighbourhood off against your friends' like Top Trumps. "45 burglaries? I've got 135 on Violent Crime, BOO-YA…"


The trick they're missing is having a little pop-up of Kirsty Allsopp, in a guise not unlike the Word paperclip, to say "It looks like you live in a crack den. Why not move to a plusher neighbourhood with not so much murdering?"

But if it doesn't cause you to sleep with a hefty frying pan under your bed (or a Le Creuset casserole, depending on your postcode), the site will do the opposite and provide some nice reassurance. Or, even better, an opportunity for gloating.

My postcode in Muswell Hill, for example, had 499 crimes. Is that a lot? It's more than you'd want, I guess, but then part of me is glad it's a substantial number. Nobody wants to live in a wussy neighbourhood, after all. Live somewhere with no crime and one day everyone might snap and rise up in mutiny. You just know Balamory is ripe for some bloodshed.

So it's not until you start comparing with other people's postcodes that you really get any perspective. It's comforting, for example, to know that as I have moved further out of London during the last five years, I have also significantly decreased my chance of being hacked to pieces with a crowbar round the back of Budgens. In Camden Town, where I was nestled safe in the halls of residence bosom for my first year in the city, the number is an eye-watering 1665. Of which 526 are the vaguely unnerving "other crime" - knowing Camden I imagine these are largely the crime of dying one's hair pink and wearing an ironic 'iPod' t-shirt while sucking a cannabis lollipop, but it's chilling all the same.

From there I more than halved my crime threat in one swift move by shipping out to Highgate (681), and then on to my current road, cotton-woolly by comparison. But the real surprise was that my family's postcode in Tarring, Worthing, had 358. That's only 141 more than my street in Big Bad London, where the streets are paved with syringes and a stranger's just a rapist you haven't met yet. My flatmate's village in the Cotswolds, just to bring a little more perspective, had 1.

So what have we learned, kids? That you can't tell what crime might be just around the corner. That the Costwolds are safer than Camden. And that maybe my hometown isn't quite as wussy as I might lead people to believe.

In which my fitness career is in the bag

It was all going fine until they gave me the rucksack.

"I can be a gym person," I had told myself. "I can wear a trainers in public. I can get up early at the weekends to go to classes with words like "pump" and "crunch" in the title. I can consider a banana 'a snack', without the addition of toffee, whipped cream and buttery biscuit base. I definitely can."

It started two weeks ago, when I walked past tracksuited men handing out fliers on Muswell Hill Broadway Just before I could whip out the standard "not today thank you" response for leafleters, clipboard-bearers and those people who want you ask you a few questions about your hair (to which I like to reply "a lady never tells," with a knowing smirk), they threw me with a piece of genuinely useful information.

"Did you know there's an LA Fitness round the corner?" they said. I did not know. "That's near your house. Near enough that you might actually manage to go there sometimes. It's the same distance as Whistles and you make it there often enough, don't you?"

The trouble is, am a health club marketer's dream. I begin every Monday full of muesli and good intentions, and end every Friday face down in a tub of brownie bites. I have had two exercisey spurts in the last five years - one during my finals, when I realised that swimming was the ultimate form of procrastination because kudos for the exercise cancel out guilt for the not revising, and the other last summer, when I started getting up an hour early to go jogging before work. I'm pretty sure this second phase did really happen (I have the sodden ball of workout gear in the bottom of my wardrobe to prove it) but from where I'm sitting it seems like the giddy behaviour of a sun-soaked moron.

"So what do you want to achieve from joining?" asks the tracksuited man when I go for my tour.

Um. To lose the permanent indentation round my stomach where my control pants dig in? To not get out of breath singing in the shower? To learn to view sweat as a badge of honour rather than a reason not to use my hairdryer in summer?

"Just to improve my general fitness," I say.

Then a quick chat and a whizz around with my bank details later, he presents me with The Rucksack. Up till now, when he's mentioned "your bag" I was picturing a purple plastic number with drawstring. But no, it turns out "my bag" is a hardcore, padded-straps-gortex-panels-clippy-bit-to-do-up-round-your-middle-whilst-climbing-a-mountain rucksack. Which isn't my bag at all. I've spent my whole life ensuring that I never have need for a rucksack, and now I've actively bought myself a rucksack for the princely sum of £49 a month plus a £25 joining fee.

So here we go, exercisey spurt number three. I am going to find my swimming costume, fill up my water bottle, grab a banana and crunch and pump for all I'm worth.

But if all else fails and I never go, at least I can recoup a little by selling the rucksack.

In which I'm free

Printed 03/02/11.

You know you're getting  to A Certain Age* when you stop 'going shopping' and just start 'going to Debenhams'. When the terrifying urban jungle that is the high street starts overwhelming you, when you've done one this-way-that-way pavement dance too many with pedestrians as you charge from shop to shop, when you need the reassurance of knowing there's a cafe where you can have a nice cup of tea and a sit down just an escalator ride away. That's when the department store comes beckoning from the shadows.

"Come to me!" it whispers in your ear like a slightly seedy Auntie, as you lie supine on the floor of the River Island changing room with a taffeta playlist stuck halfway over your head. "I have everything you need. Don't waste your precious energy gadding about like a fool - within my doors you can buy a pillowcase, some pants and a teacake in 20 minutes."

Until now, I'd never fully understood the appeal of the department store. Much in the same way that those massive buffet restaurants who serve every cuisine are basically always delivering quantity at the expense of quality ("Lasagne and pad thai on the same plate, mmmm a taste sensation"), I'd assumed department stores always just covered every base, weakly, instead of selling one thing really damned well.


Guarded by their army of terrifying make-up ladies (original skin tone unknown) department stores felt to me as a teenager like somewhere you would always leave having purchased a towelling dressing gown, no matter what you originally went in to buy.

But no longer. Now, I get it. The Are You Being Served fantasy suddenly makes sense to me. Department Stores are like tiny, complete little worlds. Their appeal lies in the idea that if you got locked in for the night, everything would be perfectly fine! You'd eat all the toasted teacakes in the cafe, sleep in the beds, and spend the rest of the time trying on beachwear in a hilarious filmic montage. When those people got stranded in the snow last year and were invited to spend the night in a nearby John Lewis, my Mum rang me up in the throws of absolute jealousy and wonderment - and it was then I realised the truth. We would all, really, just like to live in a department store.

Which one, though? In Worthing you basically have Debenhams or Beales, with the slightly depressing lesser option of BHS if needed. Debenhams is the shinier of the two, more in touch with the outside world, but Beales has a homespun charm that can't be matched.

In London, meanwhile, the department store provides a invaluable port in the Oxford Street storm. There's Debenhams and John Lewis for sales shopping that starts on cocktail dresses and will always inevitably end up at control pants, House of Fraser for pretending to be a young urbanite who goes to drinks functions (instead of a young luddite who goes to Nandos for a treat) and then, the Grandaddy of them all - Selfridges.

For years, I was as intimidated by Selfridges as everyone else. It's posh! It has Fendi handbags! It has people who can afford to buy Fendi handbags! Am I even allowed in here wearing jeans? But then I uncovered its secret. The great equaliser.

Here it is: it has a Topshop. And I can afford Topshop! It's right at the back and you have to walk through a load of mortgage-defying stationery to get to it, but it has one, and thus, I have as much right to shop in Selfridges as every Arab Sheikh and his wife. "Don't mind me," I silently say, as I trot past the Cartier and through the millionaire's bedding section. "I am just a simple gal, on my way to Topshop."

"But if we happen to get stranded here for the night, don't think I'm not going to town on the Chanel."


*For many people, that Certain Age is somewhere in the midst of mortgage repayments, parents' evenings and menopause. In my head, however, it's about 26.

In which the buff boys had better beware

To be printed 27/01/11.

We're at the end of what was really a very newsy week. Just as the papers were cracking their knuckles and sitting down for a session of prime punning on their 'Johnson-out-balls-in'-style headlines, the world decided to throw a  bit more (decidedly less punnable) news at them. Then a bit more. Then a bit more, then some more after that.

But amid all the resignations and stepping downs and bowing outs, there was one demise that I'm afraid will go sadly unnoticed. Except by a clutch of under-informed thirteen year old girls looking for torso pictures of One Direction to put in their lockers. Yes, Sugar magazine is going to that great wastepaper basket* in the sky.

A large proportion of you won't appreciate what a sad loss that is. Because, obviously, nobody reads magazines anymore! Do they? Not the yoof, anyway, who we all know get all their information from weekly podcasts transmitted directly into their brains from speakers in the Topshop changing rooms, at a frequency only the under-18s can hear. But for any female alive before 1992, or any male who has ever had  a young female ask him anything about female functioning that they really rather wouldn't answer, the loss of teen mags is a cause for lamentation.
 
Coming from a family of averagely strict principals (yes to the hair dye, no to the Faliraki holiday), I graduated through  a well-worn chronology of girls' mags. I started on Girl Talk, but wasn't allowed Shout! because it talked about training bras. Then I moved onto Shout! but wasn't allowed Mizz, because it talked about periods. Then I was allowed Mizz, but wasn't allowed Sugar because it talked about kissing boys. By the time I was allowed Sugar, I had realised that far juicier titbits could be got out of my Mum's Woman's Weekly, albeit with a side portion of menopause and hair thinning.

There was one gloriously libertine phase where a dog-eared copy of More found its way into the waiting room magazine pile at my dancing school, leading us all to race to ballet early for a sacred ten minutes poring, goggle-eyed, over the pages. I still consider More a bit too racy for me now if I'm honest. There's no pets corner, for one.

But the joy of girls' magazines wasn't just down to their information, it was also about the participation. I spent a significant portion of my tweens staging humiliating accidents in front of boys (in girl-mag-speak, "lush lads", "gorge guys" or "fit fellas", always alliterative) outside McDonald's, just so I could sell the story to the Cringe page for a £10 Tammy voucher. Aside from flavoured lipgloss, embarrassment was essentially the currency of these publications. If your parents weren't humiliating you, it was your teachers. Or your friends. Or your little sister, who just happens to have a snot attack over new hoodie as a buff boy walks past outside Morrisons.

Then, of course, there was the crowning glory of the girls' mag - the problem page. This was where we learned to outwardly say "eww, what a freak," while inwardly going "phew, glad that's normal." Where practising snogging on the back of your hand was a sane, sensible thing to do. Where the answer to everything, every single thing, was "just be yourself! And maybe phone this helpline." Aunt Sally in the Sunday Times has definitely got the wrong idea.

But the saddest thing of all about Sugar folding? I'll never work there now. And I had a whole folder of Cringe stories saved up, just in case.

*Recycling box, I mean. Sorry, sorry.