Tinkerbelle

I work for a media company, and for this reason, it seems to be socially acceptable to drink on any day of the week with ‘day’ in it. Wednesdays are packed full of media lunches, Thursdays are the new Fridays and Fridays are, well, the old Friday. Any occasion where a beer trolley can get wheeled out, the colleagues are all over mass alcohol consumption, and the hangovers rage for days after as people learn to work with the shakes.

Birthday champagne? All over it. Friday afternoon beer trolley? Oh go on then. Tequila Tuesday? Waitaminute…

A few months ago, after a terrible previous week and a pretty bad start to that one, a colleague and I decided to go to the bar below the office once Tuesday’s working day was officially over, and have a glass of wine. We should have realised when I walked up to the bar and accidently ordered a bottle that the night wasn’t going to end how we had previously expected. The line had been drawn, and we were officially ‘out for the evening’.

I’m normally quite sensible. The idea of a hangover for the rest of the week is anything to turn me teetotal – I don’t want to sit in pointless meetings feeling terrible and getting beer fear from flashbacks of the night before. But something about that week had sent me over the edge and the self destruct, devil may care button had been firmly pushed.

We finished the bottle of wine and head off to our favourite bar for a game of cocktail roulette. The rules are simple; you work down the menu but can’t go for the same one twice. The results are interesting.

We sunk 5 rounds of the game until someone had the wise (not so wise) idea that we would go for a dance, so, at 11pm on a TUESDAY we found ourselves in a live music club, dancing on an empty dancefloor to all our favourite crown pleasers. By this time, tequila consumption was at an all time high and we were loving life, not even thinking about the 9am meeting we had in the morning. There were cheers of “#TequilaTuesday!!” from my friends, and they were coming thick and fast. It didn’t bode well for the rest of the week, but we drowned out that little voice in our heads and carried on regardless.  Some serious shapers were thrown until I looked up and stumbled upon an awful realisation.

I had been on dates with the lead singer of the covers band – who was now standing on the stage, ploughing through their set list and clearly resisting the urge to crease up laughing. We had rocked some serious Dad dancing in the ten minutes since he had clocked us, including the running man, some robot moves and my best Mexican wave. Awkward.

 I had been out with him a few times at the end of last year, but Christmas and my trip back to the States had got in the way and I hadn’t seen him in a few months. The embarrassment was still raw. It was one of those ‘dear God why am I still here?” moments, where I would have rather been sitting in a room with a bunch of accountants sticking needles in my eyes than there.

More tequila was consumed.

The moral of this story is, #TequilaTuesday CANNOT BE A THING. It doesn’t do good things to ones week.

Whether tall or short, skinny or fat, male or female, every human being has one horrible thing in common.

The gym.

Its affected all of us in some way, at one point or another. Those rushed mornings where you thought that your exercise regime would get the kick it needed if you just ran before work, or the sweaty evenings that you wanted to veg out in front of the TV but someone made you go for a run with them… we can all relate.

There are a few different categories that all of us fall into:

The “I Must Go To The Gym To Enjoy Life”-rs

You know these ones. They’re the men who wear teeny tiny Speedos in the pool, always wear Lycra or t shirts that are 3 sizes too small for them with an enhanced deep V and always have shaved backs. If you don’t shave your back dude, you aren’t in the gang. The female of the species have ponytails long enough to whip you with if you get too close to them in aerobics, always have a water bottle that matches their bra (WHO DOES THAT?!) and wear lip gloss. In the showers.

Always on show, their defining feature is that although they put everyone to shame in the canteen by eating “only fish and vegetables” they love cake in the privacy of their own home and drink their weekly calorie intake in gin and tonics at the weekend. We’re onto you, skinny minnies.

Gym bunny. Awwww

The “I Took Out A Membership, Goddamit”-ters

Its OK people, I’ve got this one. I used to go to the gym religiously, 5 days a week. If I couldn’t make it n the evening I would go at lunch and run for half an hour, returning to my desk with the complexion of a tomato / human hybrid, and I felt really good about myself. I think I was on crack.

One day I didn’t go, and this day turned into a week, and a month, and before I knew it I had diligently been paying my gym membership for 6 months and could count on one hand the 3 times I swam, and twice I used the shower when our hot water tank was broken at the flat. The most expensive swim and hairwash I will ever have. But I felt safe in the knowledge that if I wanted to go to work out, I could.

I also own a pair of yoga pants that although are sometimes used for yoga, more often serve the purpose of its too early for pj’s but I must take these jeans off. And we are in love.

Perfect gym dodging excuse.

The “The Gym is So Shameful, I Hate It Here”s

These guys and girls always wear massive grey marl t shirts and cycling shorts, and want to be working out even less that I do. Someone told them that they had to go, or they have booked a holiday where they know they might have to put on a bikini, and they want to tone up, work out and feel better. Good for them! But the gym is a loveless place, and the constant worry of bumping into someone they know / breaking something / getting horrendous sweat patches puts them off so much that they look like a puppy that’s been kicked.

The “I’m A Newbie Exercise Class”ers

Yeah, I fall into this category too. I’m the one in a class that I have done a million times that always dances the wrong way, or (and this has happened) roundhouse kicks left when I am supposed to be roundhouse kicking right in a combat class, only for my foot to make contact with some guys face. I’m also the one that gets the giggles in yoga and has to leave for fear of throwing up in spinning. Don’t get me started.

The “I’m Here So I’m Getting My Moneys Worth”ers

You can spot these guys a mile off. They are often seen chatting to the people working on the front desk, asking too many questions in classes and calling out to the instructors by name. they have paid their monthly fee and are determined to participate in all the classes, moaning about how they don’t like this one as it puts their back out.

Which category do you fall into? Are there any more?

Sometimes being a girl is hard. You see all the celebrities doing it successfully, with their teeny tiny little stiletto heels and their perfectly solid fringes, and you look in the mirror and wonder what went wrong. Specifically, the fact that you are wearing sweat pants (or in my case yoga pants that are barely ever used for yoga), have toothpaste on your tank top, and hair that looks like you got caught in the eye of a storm. And that’s just Monday.

I’ve talked in length about beauty treatments before – tanning disasters, not understanding how people relax during massages; the list is endless. But last night when chatting with my sister, I remembered my first leg waxing experience.

Lets share.

For those new to this AA style giving out of information, my name is Belle (well, it isn’t) and I have skin like Casper the Friendly Ghost, just slightly less friendly. The polite amongst us refer to it as ‘creamy’ or ‘albaster’; in all honesty its basically see through and scary to children when devoid of makeup. My hair on the other hand, is naturally the darkest of brown, so of you are visualising Morticia Addams, then you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

Its funny how beautifying can get us from A to B, isn’t it?

Roald Dahl wasn’t far off….

I remember with alarm the first time I decided waxing my legs was the answer. I bought th strips, diligently read the instructions and decided that, fully armed with the information, I would go ahead. I waited till everyone was out of the house (preparing for screams that no one could hear and ridiculing from my little sister) and stuck a strip onto my leg. Fine. I tentatively gave it a little tweak. Ouch.

I had a dilemma. I could either rip it off, like a plaster and be in agony, or I could leave it there. It would fall off eventually. I pulled again. It REALLY hurt.

Fast forward to two hours later, and my sister returned. I filled her in with the details of the dramatic leg waxing episode. She laughed, and asked me to see the red bit where the waxing strip was.

Ahem.

I rolled up the leg of my trousers, and there, bold as brass, was the wax strip. I had gone with leaving it there forever, where it remains to this day.

Not really. My sister spent a good forty minutes giggling at my plight, which made me really huffy and then decided to help me by lunging at it and ripping it off. I thought she had cut my leg off.

Needless to say, over the last decade I have seriously manned up and created a workaround. One of my best friends is a beautician so she does my waxing at her house, where my goddaughters live. I figure that screaming swear words at her isn’t suitable for the delicate ears of my babies, so I keep my mouth shut.

There’s always a solution, right?

When I heard that the Spice Girls musical was being made, I was excited. Not the quiet, adult excited that most 26 year olds display, but the running to my friend Fi and proclaiming that we absolutely MUST go type of total excitement.

As a child I loved the Spice Girls. I zig a zig aaaahed with the rest of them, not really knowing what it meant (does anyone?) but not wanting to be left out of the revolution that was spicing up ones life. At 10, they were the best thing ever, and there were regular arguments when playing at school over who got to be which Spice Girl. My little sister loved them too, totally confused as to why but knowing with total certainty that if her big sister was doing it, it was absolutely something that she should be doing too.

But, like any 10 year old, I desperately wanted to fit in with the crowd, and as we got slightly older, actually admitting that you liked something was so uncool.

One Sunday evening, we were forced into the car and dragged to London by our Dad on the premise that we were taking his best friend to work. No one works on a Sunday I commented. Can’t I just stay at home with Mum? Little Princess stamped her feet and protested car sickness, going through all the normal avoidance techniques practiced on her Daddy in the past, but he was having none of it.

We sat in the back of the car and sang along to the Top 40, doing the dance moves and being laughed at by the grown ups in the front of the car. My Father remarked that if I remembered school work like I remembered song words I’d be the next Einstein. How rude!

The Spice Girls came on to the radio and my sister and I chattered away at the lyrics, doing the dance routine, until we were asked “So you girls like the Spice Girls?”

“Noooooooooooo! Theyre terrible! Sooooo uncool!” was our response. Typical belligerent little girl stuff.

We pulled up outside Wembley Arena, and were escorted to our seats, ready to watch the Spice Girls. I remember the gut wrenching embarrassment of being so rude when we were being treated to such a present, and the toe curling excitement at being told we were going backstage to meet them after the show. Turns out my Dad’s best friend worked with them and had organised a treat for us. We jiggled through the concert with excitement until the time came and we were whisked through to a room backstage. At this point, my darling little sister ran off, and spent the rest of the evening throwing up, overcome with excitement. She returned briefly for us to have our photo taken with Mel B (which looks scarily like Harry Potter’s female alter ego and a blonde, child version of Mel B with mental blonde curls) before running back to resume throwing up duties.

Fast forward a few (nearly 20) years, and the Olympics was on, complete with Spice Girl boogying on a bus at the ceremony, and everyone was so excited again that they could cry. I watched the closing ceremony with my housemates, and at one point i was torn; I was desperate for the loo but the Spice Girls still hadn’t been on. I ran out the room shouting “If they come on call me, use the code phrase!!” They asked what the code phrase was and heard me screaming from the bathroom “SPICE UP YOUR LIFE, OBVIOUSLY!”

I think that’s set the scene. For most of my life, I have unashamedly loved the Spice Girls, so the idea of going to see the musical was the best thing ever. We dreamed of glittery mini dresses and Union Jacks; cabaret versions of our favourite songs and lots of Girl Power and animal print.

It wasn’t to be. To say it was the most painful two hours of my life would be a total understatement. At one point, Fifi started rummaging in her bag and I was concerned she was looking for a pen to stab herself in the eye with. All ten of us cringed and winced as the Mum and Dad sang 2 Become 1 in some seedy B&B in Spice Girls land, and when asked if I wanted a sip of water I politely asked if there was enough to drown myself with. It was horrible.

See this as a warning (although a good few people have asked me what I expected..) if you loved the Spice Girls with all the space in your teeny tiny little pre teen heart, DON’T GO AND SEE THE MUSICAL. My work here is done.

Call me a hippie, but I believe in karma. Like the song by Culture Club, Karma Chameleon ( which as a child I used to think was “come here come here come here chameleon”) it comes and goes. I don’t think that there is some higher being that decides whether you are on the good or bad route though, but I honestly think that it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Screw with someone else, and you subconsciously worry yourself into thinking that you have something bad coming to you, and as a result, something goes wrong.

So in that respect, surely good karma comes to you if you act respectfully, treat people as you would like to be treated, and pay it forward. A close friend told me recently about her high school teacher, who always paid for himself and the car behind him at a toll road, in the hope that one day someone would do it for him. The chances are in the society we live in today it will never happen, but from positivity breeds hope, and I’m sure that his life is that tiny bit more fulfilled because of his generosity.

I don’t think I pay it forward often enough. When I had a car I would sometimes hand the ticket to someone on my way out if there was money left on it, but I think in the great scheme of things, that’s not what paying it forward means.

But I think that the idea of doing something selfless means entirely that. You can’t do something in the hope that someone will do something back for you, because then the action loses its meaning and becomes a means to an end, right?

How are you paying it forward?