Tag Archives: blog

Age Is But A Number

16 May

Today marks the 27th anniversary of the day I was born, a day my mother’s life became considerably more awesome. As a child I was a complete primadonna, scared of getting muddy, refusing to eat most foods and reluctant to admit that my baby sister was something that was staying around. As a 27 year old im scared of getting muddy, sure, but I will eat anything within a mile radius and am reluctant to let my little sister leave when we spend any time together. What a difference over a quarter of a century makes!

The fact that I am now 27 is a bit of an issue for me; my brain has a power struggle with things that I think I should be doing and things that I am actually doing, causing minor meltdowns when I think that I have missed something off the list. As an over achiever, I long for the days when I was at school and papers got marked, exams got scored and you knew you were bang in line with your peers. Thanks Facebook.

For example, when having a chat with my mother over the weekend I casually asked her how old she was when she met my Dad. 22. How old she was when she married him. 24 and how old she was when she had me. 26.

I then dramatically declared myself “behind the curve” and announced that I would be a spinster surrounded by cats, growing old in a hoarders house surrounded by old cardboard boxes and things that I had formed emotional relationships with for no reason other than attachment, like bin bags. Sure, I may have been watching too many of those compulsive hoarder shows, but the fear was still there. I ate a whole lot of cheese (I might be old now and my cheese choices have matured from orange square cheese to goats cheese, but cheese is still my comfort food of choice) and went back to my lovely urban flat, minus children and significant other half  to cook and clean (makes me feel calm, don’t judge) until I proudly announced that “I liked it when my flat smelt of swimming pools” and I wasn’t even joking.

My housemate (God love her) then proceeded to read me an article about things that would make me feel old, and they did. So it worked.

Capture

The main killer that took me from ‘strangely happy about the fact that I am turning 27’ to ‘wait while I go slash my wrists with my OAP bus pass” was the fact that Luke Perry, the first TV star who I was in love with in 90210, is 45. Goddamit, 45??!!!! The Backstreet Boys are also rocking their 40s, and according to this article, not too well given the hair plugs and protruding beer bellies.

If you fancy getting hit with the full list, here you go.

The moral of this story is that after a brief chat with myself where I pondered my existence, I realised that I don’t actually want to be 17 again. I had bad hair, hadn’t mastered the art of contact lenses and ……….. TEQUILA.

I rest my case.

What makes you suddenly realise you’re a grown up?

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Forgive Me, For I Am A Cross Dresser

13 Feb

I mean it.

F*!@ng cross.

I hate shopping. I know we have discussed this before, but I feel the need to cover old ground with this one. I HATE SHOPPING. It comes at you with alarming force (and for all those people who just happen to have a ‘spare’ outfit in the cupboard for the surprise event, I’m not a bit fan of yours right now either) suddenly you need a dress for something you have to go to this weekend, or your bra strap breaks and you have to make a non scheduled Victoria Secret stop, or your sister throws up on your boots…. it’s all the same. Sprung from nowhere like Robin Hood in the forest, you have to go.

Not THAT sort of cross dresser.....

Not THAT sort of cross dresser…..

Firstly, I’m a fan of online. Browsing through virtual shelves of sumptuous fabrics and delicately made garments is my joy de vivre. No being ram raided by some glamazon who is coveting that last size 10 you are halfheartedly looking at, or being asked every two minutes by the shop attendant if you “need any help at all?” (the answer being yes! Mental help if I have to carry on doing this) But it carries with it its limitations, in that you can’t be totally sure you havent accidently bought lycra unawares, or that you wont look like a doughnut trying to force itself into a test tube when you try it on.

Shops get the better of me. And so do playsuits. My best friend laughs at me for constantly picking up playsuits masquerading as dresses, and once I tried one on and managed to get both legs through one leg hole, before enquiring what the funny bit of fabric was and being hilariously informed by the dying shop assistant and my friend that that was in fact the other leg. Foiled by a playsuit once again!!

Secondly, I hate changing rooms. They either make you look like Halle Berry; all sinewy arms and washboard stomachs so that you purchase the item, get it home and model it for your sister who, once composed, recommends you take it back. This happens far too regularly. Or, you take your clothes off, look at yourself in the mirror in your underwear and are overcome by a sudden sense of horror. A combination of the oh-so alarming lighting and the circus house of mirrors cause a sob to rise in your throat while you speed dial your mother and beg “AM I THE ELEPHANT MAN IN DENIM??”

"The shopping is done, biiiiiitches!"

“The shopping is done, biiiiiitches!”

To make the whole thing worse. in London it doesn’t matter what day of the week or hour of the day you go, everyone else is there. Its like everyone has a pager, and as soon as I get the idea that I can’t put it off any longer and I simply must go shopping, the beeper goes off and everyone in the world springs from their sofas, puts on their shoes and hot foots it to Stratford, where I am innocently getting off the Tube, prepared to give this shopping lark that girls seem to love one more go.

Love it or hate it?

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Let Them Eat Cake

19 Nov

This weekend saw the birthday of my friend Lauren, and since I didn’t have a clue what to buy her, I thought I would make a cake.

Let me give you some background. I used to be pretty bad at cakes. I had a dream that I might be a modern day Julia Childs, and at school I looked forward to the module in Home Economics where we made cakes. I whisked and prepped my first cake ever, put it in the oven, and promptly blew it up, taking out the two cakes in the oven above. Turns out you CAN put too much baking powder in cake mix. Who’d have thought it? I was kindly advised by the teacher to try something different for GCSE, and my hopes and dreams of becoming a chef were crushed (as if).

hyperbole and a half, one of my favourite cartoon blogs.

If you’ve been reading my blog a while you’ll know stubbornness is kinda my thing, and like the French teacher who told me I’d never amount to anything (I then proceeded to walk out of my final exam with a high A) I’m a pretty good cook. I do the Christmas dinner for my friends, and I’ve been known to rustle up entire three course meals for dinners. So f**k you, teachers!

So, back to the cake. Pinterest has been distracting me from daily life for a while now, and it makes me feel pretty inferior when i see all the absolutely outstanding recipes that people make, while I draw smily faces on the top of cupcakes. Out pops Stubborngirl! “Well if random, faceless Pinterest stranger can create masterpieces from cake, then so can I!” I think, without any background knowledge of said faceless user.

I looked at this one.

Bit much? Maybe.

Then I saw this one…

Yep, probably still a little too much effort for a Saturday.

And then I found my inspiration. A Kit Kat and M&M cake, In actual fact, I had my eye on it for a little while, but could never justify making it for a night in with a film. Although I reckon I could have had a good go at destroying one by myself :)

I went to the shop with a spring in my step, and some slight anticipation. I have done this before you see. When I was 20, I decided to lovingly craft my then-boyfriend a birthday cake. He loved playing the guitar, and in my head I would make a white cake with a guitar on it and be crowned the best girlfriend ever. Fantastic idea. In reality, my mother came home to me rocking and crying, sobbing at her “I don’t know how you do iiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttt!!!! Yours always look so gooooooooood!” When she investigated the situation, my cake looked like it had been hit by a car at speed and flattened, and the ‘guitar’ icing shape I had made was no more than a hotdog looking disaster with a really long sausage. Turns out that my head is far more creative than my hands. Mum had to sort the cake out, he was amazed, but I couldn’t lie and say that it was my work of art, in case friends and family started commissioning me for cakes. Imagine, me not being able to refuse and a birthday cake for a party looking like this…

“I don’t get it, she used to be so good at cakes!”

Anyway, I got there, bought all the ingredients, including four family packets of KitKats, and danced home, singing a song about baking a cake (It happens, can’t help it) and set to work.

It was awesome.

I sandwiched it together with chocolate spread, feeling very grown up (cake sandwiching?! Normally I just cover cupcakes in frosting so you can’t see how misshapen they are) and stuck the KitKats on the side.

Fuck. There might not be enough KitKats to go round. Not going back to the shop, I thought. Man already thinks I have an eating disorder due to the incorrect correlation between the amount of KitKats I am buying and my body weight. Must fit round!!

Panic over. They fit round. I iced the top with the M&Ms, and then spent 25 mins dancing round my kitchen like Will Smith in the Fresh Prince, marvelling at how amazing I am.

See!!!!!

“And lo, behold the cake that will end all cakes.”

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A Wintery Weekend At Borough Market

1 Nov

It’s a rare occurrence, but this weekend was mine and mine alone. No neatly penned scribbles in the diary, no vague plans with the girls carried away into the air when we previously parted – nothing.

Exciting. I love the thought of a free weekend spanning out across the horizon with nothing interrupting it as it drifts away, and so I went about that brilliant hobby of making last minute plans to fill my day.

On Friday evening we decided, out of the blue, to go out in Camden. There was a bite in the breeze as the season is turning, but we had great fun drinking and dancing and talking with strangers. It just goes to show that when you are with your best friend, time passes too fast and very happily. No fair weather friends, just me and my partner in crime, having fun.

My Weekend In Photos

My Weekend In Photos

On Saturday we went to Borough Market. If you are based in London and haven’t been, or ever get to London, it’s a must. Lane upon lane of food stalls, the hustle and bustle of people browsing butchers and fishmongers, and the delightful smell of food stalls whetting your appetite and tantalising your taste buds. It was so hard not to stop at the first stall and chow down on paella, but luckily we resisted as we eventually came to a hog roast stand with cracking and applesauce. Yum!! We finished wandering the market and found an independent cafe to have some tea and warm our bones before heading out into the sleet to go home.

I woke early on Sunday, as the clocks had changed and took the train home to spend the day with two poorly little girls. We had great fun making pizza faces, watching movies and playing, with the kind of clingy cuddles that only sick kids give you, when they don’t want to be out exploiting and discovering, just having cosy cuddles.

How were your weekend? Seems like an age ago now!!

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When There’s No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Walk The Earth

24 Oct

At first cock-crow the ghosts must go
Back to their quiet graves below.
~Theodosia Garrison

 Are you sitting comfortably, my dear? Let me tell you a story, of horror and fear….

I’m a bit of a wimp. My bedroom door is right by a door that leads downstairs, and if I go to the loo in the night I often run past the door to get back into bed, just in case the ghouls get me. As a five year old, I vividly remember being read a story by a school teacher about a monster that lived in the space created when a door was left open; the triangle between that and the wall, and now, as a twenty six year old woman, I still sleep with the door shut. Its habit, but I’m sure it has its roots in this. I hate to be able to see darker patches, it stops me from sleeping.

So this weekend, when my sister and I decided to go to the cinema we had a bit of a debate over the right film. I opted for Madagascar 3 (cartoons and penguins) but she preferred Paranormal Activity 4. You know the one, demons are let in, demons throw humans all over the place, humans in the cinema join together in terrified union, humans go home and have to sleep with the light on in case fictional tale of fear is somehow true… not my cup of tea. BUT, seeing as I am closer to thirty than twenty, I thought it was time to embrace my inner wimp and become at one with my demons (see what I did there) so I did it. I braved. To be honest, the film was rubbish and not at all scary, but I thought that about the first one. Until….

I went to Cyprus in September. On the first night I struggled to get to sleep; the heat, new environment and presence of my best friend was all alien to me, and it took a really long time to drift off. When I eventually did, I was woken by a crash that sounded like it was coming from the bathroom. I went to investigate.

Just in case you are trying to picture the scene, I wasn’t armed with anything, I was just lookin’. Not alarmed, nothing. It sounded like the noise when your shampoo gets knocked off the bath and scatters down into the tub, but when I got to the bathroom, there was nothing there. The noise was too loud to have come from an adjoining room, but despite being suitably freaked out, we went back to sleep. Pretty soon I heard the steady breathing of my friend, who had gone straight back to sleep with no concern. Could I? No, I could not.

 Because all I could think about was the bit in Paranormal Activity 1 where I had laughed. The goaty footprints. At the time, when the girl put the talc all over the floor and I joked that didn’t the devil have hooves and wasn’t this the perfect time to see goaty prints in the talc, I didn’t think it would come back to haunt me.

What-if-there-really-is-a-devil-and-its-portal-is-a-hotel-room-in-Cyprus? I panicked.

Eventually, I managed to calm myself enough to start drifting off, and just as I was about to fall asleep, I woke myself up screaming.

It had happened again.

Luckily, my best friend has the patience of a saint and managed to calm me down, but by this point I was freaking out, and ready to go sleep in the foyer of the hotel and get the first bus out to a church in the morning, to stand on some hallowed ground or whatever it is you are supposed to do when being haunted.

We finally found out what it was. The fridge had been making a horrendous humming noise, and to help me get to sleep, I had unplugged it. I left the door open to stop it from stinking our room out, not realising that it had a really small ice freezer in the top. Through the night, the ice was melting and large chunks were falling from the freezer onto the tile floors, causing the crashing noise.

Totally rational explanation.

Still slightly traumatised.

I’m looking forward to sharing some of the outfits from the Halloween party next week :)

Do you have any ridiculous stories that scared you at the time?

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It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas – Winter Warmers

23 Oct

As much as I hate to admit it, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The nights are drawing in and the weather is starting to chill, and the fireworks going off in the distance most nights herald Bonfire Night on its way – my favourite holiday of the year. The mince pies in Marks and Spencer at the start of September was a bit much if I’m honest, but I love the fact that the air is starting to smell like gunpowder and it feels crisp when you step outside. The chestnut man has arrived in Covent Garden and now when I step out of the office the familiar Christmassy smell greets me, and gives me the warm and fuzzies. We are on the countdown, people, and I for one am super excited to see the gleeful little faces of my god-daughters when they open the presents that I have already started buying, and get their letters from Father Christmas.

It does mean that the flip-flops have seen my toes for their last time this year, and are lovingly placed in my wardrobe, not to be seen again till the sleepy sun rises in spring. I’m getting my money’s worth from my new leather boots, and my winter coat has been dusted down and is being carted all over the place when I think it’s cold out, and then decide after walking a bit that I’m actually melting. My Canadian friend informed me that he couldn’t cope with Britain as its ‘all about the layers’ and he was finding it hard to grasp, and you know what, it’s true.

But there are some AWESOME layers for me to get my grubby little paws on! I love the fact that England is no longer the chubby kid that’s picked last for the football team, and now the quintessential look is aspirational. Quilted jackets, wax, tweeds and Wellington boots are all the rage, and although I detest mud and getting wet, my wardrobe makes me look like I would be at home on the back of a tractor, complete with sausage dog and locally sourced produce. I am Queen of the Country, hear me roar (above the churning noise of the tractor and the mooing of the cows).

Given the fact that it’s the giving time of the year, I have some exciting competitions coming up between now and Christmas and I’m pleased to announce the first one, with Joules! By entering below, you have the chance to win your choice of jacket from the range. You can choose between the quilted and tweed options on the site, for men, women or your little ones.

I wanted to use Rafflecopter to run this, but WordPress limitations mean that I can’t, so to enter all you have to do is leave a comment below with your email address, and what you love from the Joules site. If you want an additional enter, then please tweet me “I just entered the Joules competition! @Lillyheart999″ and I’ll throw you into the mix again :) .

My favourites are included in the image above, but I love the Women’s Quilted Jackets and the Men’s Quilted Jackets would make a perfect present. They look so snuggly and warm!

Joules do these awesome jackets for men, women and children, and you can enter wherever you are in the world, so whether you want a great Christmas present for someone on your list or a bonus gift-to-self, then please go ahead and enter! Its running for 2 weeks, and the winner will be notified by email on the 11th of November. Good luck! (pick here).

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Under The Sea

4 Oct

I’m sitting here writing while listening to the waves lap on the shoreline, and the wind gently rustles the leaves on the trees above. I imagine its dusk, and as the twilight descends, the sky is turning pink and all you can see from the sand is the calm of the ocean, mimicking my mood.

I imagine? Sure. I imagine. The reality of it is that it’s well past witching hour (I’m testament to the fact that Roald Dahl was pulling my leg as a child. The BFG isn’t real, and he hasn’t come to find me. My eight year old heart lies broken) and I’m listening to the dulcet tones of the sea from an app on my iPhone. Insomnia, my old friend. I wish I could say I’ve missed you.

And what have I done in the hours your weary heads rested on your pillows? Nothing productive. I’ve plucked my eyebrows with a magnifying mirror (dangerous habit, often resulting in the accidental removal of most of my eyebrow) given myself an alternative French manicure in lilac and green, changed my duvet cover, finished my book, stared at the ceiling and pondered my life. And now I have resorted to an app with a choice of whale song, metronome, robins chirping (WTF? Don’t even ask), frogs (likewise) or the beach.

So please excuse me while I get back to pretending I’m shipwrecked- but in a cool, not-to-worry fashion rather Tom Hanks in that film that I can’t remember the title of because I’m tired, but where his best friend is a football.

It’s worse than I thought.

The problem with me is I over think things… Oooh, a parrot!! I wonder who else is on the beach…..Gah!! Just gave myself a minor heart attack by lying on the volume button and causing lapping ocean to become more monumental high tide sweeping loungers off and causing residual water damage. Oops. Must try to be more careful!! Normal volume has been resumed but I don’t think this is the app for me; it’s just making me need a wee.

Just as an aside- if anyone sees me tomorrow looking frazzled, with unbrushed hair or my clothes on inside out, make me a coffee and avert your eyes. We’ve all been there!!!

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Enough With The Oversharing

28 Sep

The world has gone crazy. Once upon a time (my mum’s era) people went to school together. They made friends, or they didn’t. Then when they left school, they either stayed friends, or they didn’t. No biggie.

I remember a teacher telling me once that statistics showed that by the time you turned 30, you would be friends with three people you went to senior school with. In a class year of over 300, that seemed like a fairly small number to me. Ah well, I thought, she’s old. What does she know?

Fast forward twelve (shudder) years from that conversation, and you’d imagine it to be true, right? People move away, people change, friendships ebb and flow with time.

Not so much. and who do we have to thank? Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, you have a lot to answer for.

In real life, we might bump into an old school friend in the supermarket when visiting the homeland, have an awkward conversation along the lines of “Hi… how are you… im good too, nice to see you” and wander back home pondering on how totally awkward that was, how you had nothing to say to them and how you hope that it never happens again. If you’re feeling particularly extreme, you might pretend to not have noticed them and make a swift exit to prevent that painfully awkward conversation in the first place.

You certainly wouldn’t ask them how they were feeling about the recent demise of their last relationship, or enquire as to what they had for lunch. And if you did, they wouldn’t be wrong in telling you, in the politest terms, to do one.

You wouldn’t go to a work colleagues house on the weekend, knock on the door and ask them what their cat has been up to today, or how their Auntie in New Zealand was doing, without so much as a “Hi, how are you?”

No? Everyone still with me???

SO DON’T *!*?@*ING DO IT ON FACEBOOK THEN!!!

It has so much to answer for. You get friend requests from people you barely spoke to, and feel obliged to accept (I don’t want them thinking im rude!!). That’s OK, as long as they share whats sharable, and keep private the things that you shouldn’t impart to the rest of the world. The odd update about Big Brother or their child is fine, and you and those people reside in relative harmony for life.

And then there’s the ones who split up with a partner, declare it to all, then follow-up with a series of posts about how their ex has moved on and they want to die, then imply that they are ACTUALLY going to top themselves, and then carry on moaning.

Some sort of rule of thumb should be adopted. If you wouldn’t march into work, announce that you are sooooooo drunk and then call your ex a whore, then don’t do it on Facebook.

Come on people. Have some dignity.

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Want VS Need

27 Sep

I want.

It’s a demand that dances from the mouths of the majority, fuelled by glossy magazines and a throw away culture of opulence and aspirations; always wanting the newest and next generation across our entire lives. It spews disregard in its wake; a mess of rubbish and packing discarded, abandoned feelings and processes, and leaves us feeling empty, and predominantly unfulfilled.

I want success, love, support and money in abundance, but the chances are I won’t get a full house on this one, and to be honest, what would I do with it if I had it? Its fun to build a massive house full of mod cons and objects, but if you have no one to share it with you may as well be sitting in a cardboard box on a street corner, by yourself.

As the Rolling Stones once said, “you can’t always get what you want, well if you try sometimes, then you might well find, you get what you need”

So stripping it back and thinking hard, what do I actually need to survive and flourish? Support and sustenance. That’s all, folks. I need the love and support of the people around me to pick me up and dust me down when I fall, and to celebrate with me when I succeed, and I need to be healthy and sustained to do so. And ultimately, that’s it.

So I can say, hand on my heart, that the people around me are the people I need. I’m impulsive (you might say flighty, but I will beat you) and I lose interest very quickly. I have a short temper, although as my years grow, my fuse grows with them and I’m stubborn to a fault. If I disagree when you tell me to do something, I will struggle to play by the rules. I think it’s the way I’m made.

But despite that, I’m loyal, considerate, and if I love you I’ll never leave you. Just like my little blog, which despite having been absent from in the previous months, I put my hand on my heart and promise to give a little more love. It’s turned into a weedy and overgrown garden, and it’s time to get pruning.

What do you truly need to survive?

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Adulthood Isn’t What I Expected.

4 Sep

When I was 15, 26 seemed like a really long way off. I figured by the time that I got to that ripe old age I would definitely be married, have a child, and own a house.

Adulthood isn’t what I expected.

I thought that I would feel like all the women I saw on the train in the morning; poised and well put together, with matching underwear sets for each day of the week and a perfectly organised handbag full of all the daily essentials that one might need, and be able to organise my way through daily life without a hair out of place.

The reality is rather more sobering. Some days I get to work and realise that I have my underwear on inside out (this actually happens more often than you would think!), and if my bra matches me knickers then it has to be a major league event, like the Diamond Jubilee. Sometimes I can’t even find a pair of socks, let alone a pair that match. My makeup is done in the morning through a bleary smog, and by the time I get to work, having negotiated the intricate labyrinth system that we refer to as the tube, it has worn off in patches, leaving me resembling a giraffe. And don’t even get me started on the days that I have to wear tights, which normally results in me putting my toe through them and having to rush to the shops to buy a new pair.

I didn’t think I’d be still waking up on a Sunday morning with last night’s makeup on, hair all over the place and bedroom looking like a tornado had swept through, lamenting that vodka isn’t my friend and what the hell happened to everything in moderation? And my wallet, for that matter.

I didn’t think I would still warble at the top of my voice when I thought that no one else was listening, to show tunes or cartoons. Sure, it used to be a whole new world, and now its tunes from Wicked, but Defying Gravity is still hollered through my house while I am doing the hoovering.

I didn’t think that I would still be calling my mother on a regular basis with any medical emergency (or non emergency) that happens. I think ill be all grown up, and then I get a rash on my arm and I check Web MD, freak out that I have meningitis and call my mother, who calms me, tells me to roll a glass on it and concludes ‘ive probably come into contact with something scratchy. Thanks Ma!

What are you finding different to how you imagined?

*thanks to Fibronomy Awesome for inspiring this post. You can read hers here*

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