Where to start?

I know that I've been away for a long time and a lot has happened in that time that I should blog about. And perhaps the biggest story of that time has been the passing of Michael Jackson. Tonight, as I got home I sat down to watch the huge memorial to a man who hasn't left the front pages of every magazine, newspaper and website in the last 12 days. I found myself becoming quite emotional at all of the tributes but it wasn't until the end, when his daughter took the microphone.

Bearing in mind that this is a child whose father took every pain to keep his kids out of the spotlight and away from the papparazzi at every opportunity, for her to suddenly speak in front of the hundreds of millions (possibly even billions) around the world who were watching was incredibly brave. As she voiced her love for the 'greatest daddy in the world', my heart broke.

For all of the dredging up of stories, dodgy jokes and endless speculation of debts and mysterious doctors that have been sensationally splashed in every form of media, it was easy to forget that in this chaos there lies a very real story of three children whose collective world has been turned upside down. Although no doubt, there are already many videos out there of the moment floating on youtube, I've chosen not to look for any or indeed include links to it. That poor little girl's devastation was heartbreaking enough the first time.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post and my boyfriend thinks I'm an emotional freak but I felt I had to write something. I guess something like this acts as a reality check on our own mortality.

I'll be back soon enough to fill in the blanks of stories from the last few weeks soon enough. Until then, tell someone you love them.

Twenty eight three days later

So, it's been three weeks since I last posted, the night before I started my new job. I hate to gush but for pretty much all of it, I love it. I'm sorry, I realise that my happiness is probably incredibly boring to the rest of the world so console yourselves that the accounts department at my new employer is crap. I've been driving myself even deeper into debt than my soon-to-be-forcefully-reduced overdraft allows until they finally pay me. It's weird to think that I'm actually getting paid an actual wage rather than expenses or at best, minimum wage. Except, it still hasn't happened so I guess technically I'm still working for free.

I've been forced to studiously avoid all shops and when I wore evil shoes to work the other day, I was in the horrible position of not being able to afford some cheap replacements on my lunch break and had to suffer painful painful shoes all day. I never thought Birkenstocks could drive me to rage but apparently it's possible. Let's just say I won't be wearing those any time soon again.

But if painful shoes is the worst to happen to me this week, I'd like to think it's been a good one. In other news, I went to see John Mayer last week at Brixton Academy. Never have I witness a more placid crowd, all politely sipping Cider, swaying gently and recording the entire thing on their mobiles. As I was too. And as soon as I find all of the appropriate cables, I too will be boring you with the out of focus footage.

Ooh you lucky people, so much to look forward to!

(Actual) Working Girl

I have news. Big news. Maybe not HUGE news, nothing earth shattering but in my world, it's pretty damn near asteroid sized. At last, my days of interning are over.

After 18 months of slave labour, I. Have. A. Job.

And I start tomorrow.

Gulp.

Warning: Wildebeest seen mid-air

Ladies and gents, I have done something I thought I would never do. Be warned, pigs are flying somewhere near you - I have joined a gym.

Those who know me will know I am the least likely person to ever be found in a place of public exercise or come to think of it, private exercise. However, the last 18 months of sitting at a desk job have meant that I have seen my waistline expand slightly and my levels of fitness, abysmal as they already were, sink to new lows.

So, yesterday the Boyfriend and I went to our local gym and signed on the dotted line. It's not the first time that I've belonged to a gym, I'll be honest. Years ago, following my first knee dislocation, I belonged to the extremely posh gym that is round the corner from me. However, when my membership shot from £40 to £120 once I turned 16, I decided that I couldn't allow myself to watch my mother pay through the nose for something I hardly ever used. Now, the £80 fee is deducted from MY bank account, which will hopefully be enough motivation for me to hit the cross-trainer.

That, or it'll be a very expensive lesson in my own laziness.

A late night visit

It's Friday night, not long after midnight. In grand English tradition, I should be standing in a queue outside a club in the rain, arguing with a bouncer about the amount of alcohol I have ingested that evening. However, after the week I've had, all I could manage to do was crawl home, shove all of the accumulated shit off my beanbag onto the floor space next to it and collapse face down onto the comforting squishy corduroy.

Sometimes, I wonder if I'm the only 23 year old out there who comes home on a Friday evening and wants to eat Chinese food in front of Ugly Betty rather than attempt to drink my own body weight in Sambuca. Don't get me wrong - I will be out on a Saturday night with the rest of the unruly mobs of Britain's pub and club scene but Friday? Nope. Sorry. Nada. I want track pants, chow mein and wine; not necessarily in that order.

As I mentioned, it's been a busy week. I leave on Monday for my first ever gig as a fashion assistant and I've had a million things to do before then and still there are things on my list. However, in one of my few moments of free time, I found this video:



For those of you who are unfamiliar with Brian Dowling, he rose through the ranks of Big Brother to win and go on to be one of the campest TV presenters in quite some time. Although his star has somewhat faded from his glory days presenting CD:UK, he's still kicking around on one of those late night quiz shows and as such, qualified perfectly for this poor revival of 80s favourite, Family Fortunes, only now with 'famous' people.

It's OK Brian, I forgive you. Vernon, you're not so lucky.

Babble

What a week. While it may seem that I have fallen back into my former sporadic blogging habit once more, I hope that's not the case. My first week back, albeit as a lackey, has been exhausting owing to its busy nature. On top of that, I chose Monday to break in some new shoes and have as a result spent most of this week hobbling around with a pained expression on my face, which I'm sure could only be endearing to my new bosses.

My week may've been busy but it has mainly been a smattering of the mundanities of life - taxes, computers breaking and a makeup crisis - and as exciting as such topics are, I can't help but feel that nobody's really interested.

Back when I'm more awake and generally, coherent.

Meh.

Oh sweet Thursday, only one more day til the weekend. Today was another case of same shit, different outfit. I got up, went to work, ate lunch, smoked two cigarettes, worked some more and then came home. My only variation on this alarmingly repetitive pattern was a brief outing to VH to hand in my expenses, a magazine and a pizza. On re-reading that sentence, I'd like to point out that all three are separate and unique in their contribution to my happiness today.

Usually, my trips to VH are a respite from the cupboard but today in the not-really-there rain, I would've given anything to stay in the warm coziness with a flapjack and a cup of tea. Working in town means that often on my journeys I spot a few famous faces going about their business. On Tuesday, I saw Bob and Pixie Geldof walking along with another man, Pixie in that black and white houndstooth coat that shes been wearing in all the papers (speaking of which - why the hell do papers use their ink on a teenager who has yet to achieve ANYTHING, let alone their GCSEs?). The previous week, I saw a Gallagher brother - the slightly less surly one - and the other day a few paparazzi were lingering outside Prada and Max Mara, waiting to get a shot of whoever was inside. This is what my life has come down to, this is what I now find exciting.

Aside from my walk in the rain, the other exciting piece of news was getting an early release issue of the magazine with some of the shots I styled in it, full credit and all. When I find some energy, I'll scan and post them. This leads me onto my final exciting installment;

I ate pizza for dinner. You may not find that exciting but I rarely eat pizza these days - when your boyfriend who loves pizza can no longer eat wheat and tomato combined so beautifully in a spherical gastronomical delight, neither can you without feeling guilty. But since he's out, what he doesn't know won't hurt him.

Britney's scalp, part two

Britney's baldness saga continues. Now you too can avoid the scams of fake Britney hair that litters ebay at the moment (that I spent most of the day watching during moments of boredom) and head on over to buybritneyshair.com and snap up a can of Red Bull, a blue lighter that Britney used to chain smoke and some cheap plastic hair. However, bidding starts at a million dollars, so my bets remain on some tacky gossip mag (the type I secretly love) buying the hair and running some tests on it. And probably on the lighter too. Britney doesn't look like she washes her hands - or herself - very often anymore.

God, who knew that I would one day post about Britney Spears' hair? It's all down hill from here.

Culture Vulture

This week, I have crammed in more cultural matter than most weeks. I started my culture feast on Tuesday, when I went to the opening night of Ferdyurke at the Bloomsbury Theatre, which was an amazing performance with a great use of space and sets but unfortunately, my lack of knowledge when it comes to Polish history meant that much of the play was a bit lost on me.

Yesterday was the most exciting. At my work experience post, most of my time is spent doing returns, grouping clothes and dealing with harassed PRs. However, as its London Fashion Week, the chaos of previous weeks has finally been rewarded with one week of relative peace and returns as all of the editors have been out at the shows.

Yesterday, the quiet was broken when the unexpected happened. We, the lowly slaves, were rewarded with tickets to some shows. I got to go to Preen in the morning and then Biba in the afternoon, which was an amazing show. I got there just as the lights were going down which meant I did a lot of falling over and fumbling as I made it to my seat and took in my surroundings. I couldn't help but notice that there were lots of very rich Russian men in the audience with their girlfriends/mistresses, one of which I swear was Roman Abramovich but it was difficult to tell in the half light and I was worried that if I stared too long, one of the big burly guards would have me quietly removed.

Hanging around outside afterwards, trying to figure out where the nearest tube was, I saw Michelle Williams and then Vivienne Westwood - it was hard to miss her with her blue hair. Unfortunately, I'd neglected to remember my mobile that morning and I thought whipping out my actual camera would be a tad dramatic, so I let those pictures slide.

I did however (along with everyone else) record hefty amounts of the shows and as soon as I can get my ass in gear, I'll post up my video. It's not the best quality but my camera was meagre in comparison to some of the others.

Monday, Monday.

Another Monday over. After my recent out of character frenzy of posting, I have once again resumed haphazard service. It's been a busy few days, so here's my excuse (and subsequent tangent paragraph) for each:

Thursday - when an inch of snow falls in London, panic descends - the trains can't cope, the roads crawl and people fall down a lot. So when 10cm fell last Thursday, you'd have thought the apocalypse had been and gone. Too exhausted.

Friday - styled another shoot. I was up at the crack of dawn in order to make my car. The previous day's snow meant chaos still reigned and chaos is tiring, you know.

Saturday - recovering from Thursday and Friday and errands. And to get away from the great indoors, we decided to experience one of our local pubs. A cultural experience, soon to be recounted on a night I have nothing else to blog about. We stayed for the football before moving onto more desirable climes with my friend Holly.

Sunday - Hangover and return of the parental.

And that rounds up my excuse/apology part of the blog.

On a completely different matter, I mentioned my friend Holly above. Today is the four year anniversary of our travelling experience, as documented in the OZblog. She reminded me earlier and its made me go all misty eyed at all the beaches we lay on, all the local drink we drank and all of the trouble we got ourselves into. I just wish I could afford to do it all again, just with better accomodation.

Jesus is my homeboy (but not Metallica's, Jay-z's or The Doors')

Lifted straight from the brilliant popbitch, the gayest bands, according to God, transcribed straight from the Christian website lovegodsway.org:


The Spores (endorse suicide)
Scissor Sisters
Rufus Wainwright
Merzbau
Ravi Shankar
Wilco
Bjork (mb)
Tech N9ne
Ghostface Killah
Bobby Conn
Morton Subotnik
Cole Porter
The String Cheese Incident
Eagles of Death Metal
Polyphonic Spree
The Faint
Interpol
Tegan and Sara
Erasure
The Grateful Dead (AIDS)
Le Tigre
Marilyn Manson (dark gay)
The Gossip
The Magnetic Fields
The Doors
Phish
Queen
The Strokes
Sufjan Stevens
Morrissey(?questionable?)
Metallica
Judas Priest
The Village People
The Secret Handshake
The Rolling Stones
David Bowie
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Man or Astroman
Richard Cheese
Jay-Z
Depeche Mode
Kansas
Ani DiFranco
Fischerspooner
John Mayer
George Michael (texan)
Angel Eyes
The Indigo Girls
Velvet Underground
Madonna
Elton John
Barry Manilow
Indigo Girls
Melissa Etheridge
Eminmen
Nirvana
Boy George*
The Killers
Lou Reed
Lil' Wayne
Motorhead
Jill Sobule
Wilson Phillips
DMX
Lisa Loeb
Ted Nugent (loincloth)
Dogstar
Thirty Seconds to Mars
Lil' Kim
kd lang
Frank Sinatra
Hinder
Nickleback
Justus Kohncke
Bob Mould
Clay Aiken
Arcade Fire
Bright Eyes
Corinne Bailey Rae
Audioslave
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Panic at the Disco
Elton John(really gay)

I'm still trying to crack the Christian code of 'mb' and the *s, so answers on a postcard. I'm also wondering who on earth is stupid enough to think George Michael is Texan? Or is that some kind of new derogatory Christian slang?

There are also some very dubious choices on the safe bands list, such as Cyndi Lauper, Evanescence (surely, this is a strange choice? Ain't nothing Christian about nose rings and lashings of kohl eyeliner.) and apparently, the extensive collection of the Right Brothers.

Note the lack of 'safe' bands in comparison to 'gay' bands. I'm going to hell in a hand basket.

(Un)interesting story of the day

So, tonight, fiddling around when I came home from work, I felt it necessary to inspect the label inside my new smock long-top-short-dress type thing. As my eyes scanned down the tiny writing and then flipped over, something caught my attention. Where I was expecting it to say Made in China/Taiwan/by poor orphan children in a sweat shop, it instead said Made in F.Y.R.O.M.

Now, you must forgive me because apparently I'm not up to date with the hip new acronyms, nor am I that good at geography. I took a good few minutes staring, puzzled, at this weird new acronym appearing on my Topshop label. Where the hell was F.Y.R.O.M.? what country was it? Eventually my powers of detection led me to google it and apparently its the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. But don't you dare call it just Macedonia.

Anyway, mystery solved, anti lives to see another day. Wearing mass produced Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia Topshop.

Try saying that quickly.

Momma's a spend thrift

So, being broke, I'm not meant to spend money. But the recent cold weather drove me to seek the comfort of the giant Topshop for the improbable purchase of new sunglasses. Despite the blistering cold for the last 48 hours, the sun was out for most of today and the spring-like feeling drove my craving for the Oliver Peoples sunglasses that we have in the cupboard in the overdrive. Since they're somewhere around £200, I figured I'd be better off getting Topshop knock-offs. I didn't buy the ones I wanted because they didn't have them. Logic would dictate it's best to wait patiently for a new stock delivery but let's face it, this is Topshop and chances of getting hold of a pair are slim-to-none.

So instead, I bought these babies:



I thought that the oversized vintage feel needed to be presented in black and white, although the glasses are actually a dark brown. I'm now hoping for a reprieve from the snow yesterday:



Today was better but still icily cold. I don't mind that much, as it means I have a legitimate excuse to wear Uggs to work.

The Perfect(ly Horrible) Storm

As you may or may not know, the UK was hit by a huuuuuuge storm that made the entire transport and road system grind to a halt, cause £1billion worth of damage and sadly, killed 11 people. I know that a storm in America recently killed 50 but in terms of ratio, you can fit Britain into California three times over and still have some spare fields, so 11 is a much higher micro percentage than 50 in comparison to population levels.

I found the tree in the picture was blown over on the route I that I walk most days; having given up waiting for a bus in the standstill traffic, I braved the winds and rain to walk home that night. I can't say that it was still standing in the morning as I'd chickened out and wisened up, catching the bus instead of schlepping on foot as I didn't want to look like I'd washed up to work on a tidal wave.

Thursday was the most amazing day. To cut a long story short, I called in and styled my own mini shoot for the magazine where I'm doing work experience, the offer of which blew me away last week. Subsequently, I became too superstitious (sp?) about to mention to most people, even my mother, until the night before the shoot. The experience was truly unbelievable and I had so much fun all day that I was fit to burst when I finally rolled through the door that night. Not even the cramped and damp tube ride home could keep the smile from its position, plastered across my face like the local loon.

Enough simpering like a love struck teenager. Normal service will resume shortly.

Mid-week-ness

I. Am. Exhausted.

I also really want one of these. However, owing to budget certain budgetary restraints - caused by a late night trip to the giant Topshop on Oxford St last night - I will not be buying one for quite some time. However, I am most grateful for my new beautiful boots that I bought last night and they came in handy in the pissing rain today. Sometimes, good things cam come from somewhat reckless actions.

Tomorrow's a big(ish) day for me at work but right now I need a shower before Ugly Betty starts and then some serious sleeping action, with a mad dash of preparation for tomorrow thrown in somewhere.

I'm getting tired just thinking about it all.

Oops.

I just spilt my ashtray. Never attempt to sit up whilst your ashtray is balanced on your bean bag folks, because it goes everywhere. All that's left to do is debate how to clean it all up - I could go all the way downstairs, drag the hoover up and suck it all up. OR I could try sweeping it all up with a dustpan and brush that I keep up here and spread it all even further, in a finer layer. The logical side of me says I should use the hoover but the lazy part of me says why bother when you can avoid stairs and heavy lifting.

And lazy wins.

Land of a thousand smells.

As much as I would like to divulge something intelligible and interesting, it is either one or the other and I'm still vaguely intelligible, or at least I hope so. I would wax lyrical about how I love what I'm doing right now but I don't know if your stomachs are strong enough and I'm not sure it counts as interesting.

I had my first experience of true 'tube crush' today. Coming home from work tonight, something was up with the Central line, most likely leaves on the line after our freak weather for the last 24 hours. Trains were only running every ten minutes at rush hour and as the train pulled into the station, the windows were a sea of black winter coats and sweaty faces, rammed uncomfortably close and I mean close. I had an awful moment between Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate where I was surrounded by four rather sweaty men whose armpits were exactly at eye level, about two inches from my face and my stomach began to turn from the smell. Thankfully, my stomach did not go through with its' threats but I think that the less said about it the better.

That's about as exciting as it's going to get tonight. The exhaustion of work coupled with Underground trauma means I need to go and lie face down on a beanbag for a while.

So much for the salad

Happy 2007*. No doubt you've all fallen off the resolution wagon by now and the cigarettes are back, the gym membership has been forgotten (or yet to be used) and those midweek drinks that you swore off are already chilling in the fridge. Am I right?

Personally, I'm not big on New Years' resolutions but as always, I've been goaded into them by those around me. However, I've decided to keep it loose and go with 'try to be a better person' and 'eat more salad'. So far, the second isn't going too well but I put part of that down to not having been to the supermarket yet.

In other news, now that my old job as a costume assistant has run it's course, I've been doing work experience in the fashion cupboard at a glossy womens' magazine. It's only been two days but so far, I've really enjoyed it. It's fairly similar to certain aspects of my old job but only with prettier clothes, nicer people and normal hours. I cannot explain what working normal hours does for my mood. I practically skip to work, barely noticing the crush of the tube and the chilly morning air. It's really rather refreshing to walk through the front door with a smile on my face rather than frowning and grunting.

Anyway, enough sunshine and light, you were probably expecting me to rant. I'm sure something will come up soon enough.

---

* - rather than post the usual fireworks/drunken toast/people photos that most post for a New Years' related post, here's my very sparkly ass. Since I feature in most other pictures from the night - and I look fat, bloated and drunk in all of them - I've decided to show off my wonderously sparkly dress that I bought in September and have been dying to wear since. It hid the bloat nicely and provoked much drunken interest in its' sparkliness. Thank you Primark.