Contemplated Pockets

Saturday’s are for:

GIRL
- Hair removal
- Pret a Manger cheese and tomato croissants
- a cheeky g n t at lunch time
- window shopping
- dancing around to Frank Sinatra in your underwear home alone
- speaking to Mum
- curling your hair
- Walkers salt and vinegar extra crunchy with triple Tesco humus dip
- striped pyjama shorts
- baths
- buying paintings
- making ur bed look pretty with candles and silk velvet pillows

While your mother was squeezing, shrieking and sweating…others were singing.

While your father was dealing, dossing and dreaming of a boy…others were dancing.

While doctors and nurses panicked as your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck, one band were basking in the sweet celebration of success.

Little did they all know that it was more about the good vibrations, than those first contractions.

In fact, the date you were born follows the yellow brick road to your destiny. The importance of your birthday is not determined by the time of year, the extent of your birthday gifts or even the conception date of your small, irrelevant gamete alliance. In reality, your future is founded upon one fact:

What was the number one single and album, on the day of your birth?

What song could have soothed your mother’s cries? 
What jam could have given your father the strength to stay in the delivery room? 
And which beat could have focused those NHS professionals to perform a medical marvel (and not mix you up with the baby in the room next door)?

Truth is, the song that was number one on the date you were popped out is, whether you like it or not, a life path. It determines whether you are fat (Pavorotti), or thin (and a bit of a trainwreck – Amy Winehouse. It decides whether you are gay (Boy George), and/or ginger (Elton John). It will turn you into a reject (‘The Kids From Fame), short lived (The Weather Girls), or a even a slut (Madonna).

May this be a lesson that when you do decide to bring a child into the world, the responsibility lies with you to make sure it is born at an appropriate time in pop chart history.  Unfortunately for you, your fate is set in stone.

To see where you’re heading…

http://www.everyhit.com/dates/

SURELY…IN AN AGE OF:

• Tablets
• Smart-phones
• ‘digital’…everything!
• unbreakable glasses
• IVF
• lights for bicycles
• luminous clothing for cyclists
• re-useable plastic bags
• Pound shop umbrellas
• Pound shops!
• Potato dauphinoise
• chemical hair straightening
• Clip on Ties
• Zeitgeist theories
• Flamin Grill Steak rudge cut crisps
• Potentially cloned Japanese people
• Sculptures made out of rubbish, called ‘art’.
• Seaweed flavour beer
• Smartphone games that let you cut up bits of fruit like a Ninja
• Waterslides that you need a mat for
• Social media channels solely for gaming
• Beautiful crushed velvet black peep toes
• £6 flights to Milan
• Microfibre sports towels
• Bengal Tiger house cats
• A patch work elephant called Elmer
• Gym Powerplates
• Gel nails
• Pay per kilo restaurants
• Labridoodles
• 7 Billion people
• One bloody Tree Hill Season 9 and
• Lambrini

WE CAN CREATE A PAIR OF TIGHTS WHICH DO NOT LADDER!!!!

At the age of 14, I had 32 pairs of shoes exploding out my bombsite of a wardrobe and into my Dad’s closet. 

Pumps. Heels. Flats. Boots. Trainers. Sexy stilletos. Smart flats. Colourfuls. …

…

Most of them, with the exception of my school shoes and trainers, I was never going to wear. But I loved them; each and every right and left shoes had a place in my high-arched-heart. They were a piece of me. A footprint if you will.

But…as puberty conquered, my bunions blossomed, my thighs thundered and my feet flippered. I was no longer able to fit into my shoe shop of dainty prizes. I was no longer small enough to wear heels and avoid looking like a giant. And in my adolescent confusion, I decided that handbags were far superior than an old, ugly collection of childish shoes. I had a new love, a statement accessory which would always have my size.

But that was then, and this is now. How childish I was in puberty. But an hour ago I found myself in Kurt Geiger surrounded by some of the most special specimens I have ever seen. And there before me was love at first sight: a pair of black crushed velvet Carvella peep toe heels, complete with black crushed velvet bow. And in my size!! Divine.

I tried them on, Cinderella in my own right, and they were mine before you can say ‘overdraft’.

I can’t explain the Eurekaic’, euphoric feeling I now possess. It was some sort of ‘double epiphany’, which I have felt before, and now feel again. I love shoes. I always have and I always will. It’s not unconditional, because they do not love me back - they hurt me, they get dirty, they make me fall over and they often refuse to fit me. But when I finally find that perfect pair, that Cinderella moment makes it worth it.

A museum has been commissioned to celebrate the year 2011. You have been asked to donate an item, that for good or for bad, made this year what is was. What would you place behind those velvet ropes and why?

For me, 2011 has been portrayed as a somewhat uncertain year. The news, riddled with politics, usually relates to questions about money. For this reason, I would donate a single £1 coin, minted in the year 2011. It would be a small item behind those velvet ropes that would make people think. 

In the current economic climate, we have no idea what £1 will mean next year. In years to come it could be worth more, worth less, ‘up against’ the Euro, the dollar; or potentially ‘down against’ the Real, the Ruble, the Rupee and the Renminbi. But a single £1 coin would represent 2011, for British people at least, because it signifies the uncertainty in a recession. People have lost jobs, businesses have gone bankrupt, and the everyday life of everyday people has been affected by this indefinite cloud over the UK. Perhaps next year the economy will improve and this cloud will clear, or perhaps it will get worse and the heavens will open. 

I recently got back from Singapore and there is certainly no recession here. Everyday sees more building and conspicuous consumption is encouraged at lavish parties and dinners. Umbrellas are being used as shade from the sun. This confidence is a world away from the uncertain pound.

Whatever that coin will mean next year or next century is a good question, but that ‘quid’ can tell a story of 2011 in a very understated, thoughtful way.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that on every holiday out of the UK, there must always always be The sunburnt day. That one day when you get so burnt you can’t move. That one day of regret. That one day where the threat of going home without a tan ceases, and your new fear is going home peeling.

We’ve all been there. You are dying to get out into the sun…You’ve only got a little time left to get brown…You’d rather have a little burn than stay pastey…and then BAM. Burnt as a fried tomato in a hot and spicy curry which has been lying out in the Indian sun in the middle of Summer.

There’s no going back. No retreating. You’ve gone past the point of no return. Even the refrigerated Aloe cannot give you back that un-tender, un-crisp, un-tight, beautiful, comfortable ‘I’m so sorry’ skin.

You can’t itch or scratch, that’ll make it worse. Don’t even bother thinking about covering it up with make-up, and there is no bloody way you are going out in that nasty sun ever again. It’s all so traumatic.

So what should you do about this problem? How does one prevent the guaranteed ordeal?

There are 2 options:

1. Try and get a tan on  a not quite so sunny day, so that The sunburnt day does not reach its full potential.
2. JUST WEAR SUN CREAM YOU IDIOT!

And of course the 3rd option, don’t leave sunny old Britain.

I just found THE HAT DRAWER. It’s the latest in a series of several disturbing finds.

When I first moved into this nice room for my 2 month stay here in Singapore, I noticed the two piles of bags on the wardrobe. No, not just bags, all identical sized rucksacks. Then, as I started to unpack I realised that most of the wardrobe was actually already full of towels. And when I thought, you know what…it doesn’t even matter…there is still the plastic drawers beside the wardrobe to fit my tiny (and proud) 2 months bag full of luggage here, well there wasn’t. The drawers were floating with swimming goggles, sewing sets, surgical masks (?) and beads (BEADS!!). Yes, I am afraid, I, am living, with a hoarder.

To hoard means to

1. To accumulate a hoard of.

2. To keep hidden or private.

And, a ‘hoard’ itself, is an ‘accumulated store hidden away for future use’.  I believe it comes from the Old English word hord, akin to Gothic huzd meaning, treasure. But somewhere along the way that vision of treasure has been lost. Hoarded perhaps.

 I should have seen the signs. The 13 identical frying pans carefully stacked on the frying pans stand in the kitchen. The ridiculous collection of irons nestled in the ironing boards corner. And the chairs…God the chairs. When this family of four I am staying with are ever going to need 18 identical white indoor folding chairs for their modest apartment will always remain a mystery.

I am sure many would argue ‘at least she is organised’, and it is true…she is the most tidy lovely lady, mother, wife in the world. But she is still a big fat hoarder. And there is no excuse.

JUST THROW IT AWAY! Let go. You won’t need that little biscuit tin full of old European currencies ‘just in case’. The Euro is here. To stay (hopefully).

And those shoeboxes you thought no one knew about in the cupboard in the hall…YOU’VE BEEN HAD!

Thank God I don’t use the fridge. The endless shelves of food in there is something even Johnny Vegas would be disgusted at.

I am being unkind. Perhaps, amongst this vault of her’s, she will find an ancient antique crayola pencil, or a rare coat hanger worth millions. Then she will be laughing.

Until then, I say chuck it out and clear away.

And don’t panic… if anyone requires an old asthma inhaler, there is a tray in the box under my bed with 6 ready and waiting.