Well, given that it turns out the hand sniffing was a bit weird, I thought I’d quickly change the subject to something that shows me a in slightly better light. Let’s just pretend the last post never happened yeah?

So, moving swiftly on…

Last Friday, I had a rather lovely day out, and I went up to London to have a look at the Littlewoods Christmas collection.

Normally I hate shopping – that moment where you catch a glimpse of yourself from behind in a brightly lit changing room is never great for your self-esteem – but it turns out that when I have a professional photographer on hand, and someone to do my hair and make up, it’s really not so bad. Who’d have thought?

Fuelled by a delicious cake selection and glass or two of mulled wine, I threw myself into the occasion, trying on everything I could get my hands on. Here is me working what I like to think of as my high-class hooker look:

Littlewoods review

I actually loved everything about this outfit, particularly the coat. It’s not something I would ever normally wear, but there’s something about it, when you put it on, you just feel lovely, like a friendly bear is giving you a big hug.   View Post

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Last night Bee and I went for dinner at Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Bee does love a good chain.

The restaurant was entirely glass fronted, so we chose a table in the window, where, once we had run out of things to say to each other, we could amuse ourselves watching people loitering about outside, trying to decide whether to go for a burger or Yo Sushi.

About three minutes later, we were watching a woman on her own, who was spending an unreasonable amount of time looking at the menu outside. “Maybe she’s meeting someone,” I suggested.

“Nah,” countered Bee, “because then she wouldn’t be looking at the menu would she?”

“She might,” I said, “if she was just trying to make herself look busy.”

Bee didn’t look convinced. “To be honest,” she said, “she does look like the kind of person who’d go to a burger restaurant on her own.” View Post

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This weekend I went for a rummage in the 20p bin at the Amnesty bookshop, and came across a collection of poems from a writer called Grace Nichols, called Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman. How could I not buy it?

My favourite so far is called Grease – poetry for women who can think of better things to do than clean kitchens.

 

Grease

Grease steals in like a lover
over the body of my oven.
Grease kisses the knobs
of my stove.
Grease plays with the small
hands of my spoons.
Grease caresses the skin
of my table-cloth,
Grease reassures me that life
is naturally sticky.

Grease is obviously having an affair with me.

 

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“But hoovering is fun!” insists really-not-very-new-anymore boyfriend. “How can you not enjoy hoovering?”

Seriously?

As I’m sure regular readers will have realised by now, cleaning in general does not feature highly on my list of Fun Things To Waste Time Doing When I Should Be Working. It certainly features less highly than watching Jeremy Kyle whilst eating chocolate Hobnobs, or having a little lie down.

Still, when Vax offered me a go on one of their new Air Force Total Home upright cleaners, I admit I was intrigued. It claims to be the most powerful vacuum cleaner in the world. In the Whole Wide World. That’s quite a claim. As a woman who’s never spent more than about thirty pounds on a vacuum cleaner, I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole experience might turn out to be a little more satisfying if I had a machine that actually picked things up.

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I understand that the cool thing to do is pretend you’re not interested in your blog stats, that you never even bother to check how many people read it, and that you write purely as some kind of irrepressible creative outlet.

Rubbish.

If I just wanted a creative outlet I’d just scribble in a notebook and hide it under my mattress, or sculpt things out of old toilet rolls. I write because I want people to read it, and to laugh, or at least smirk a bit, and so I’m always interested to see who’s reading and where they come from.

One of the most intriguing sections of the stats is the list of search engine terms that bring people to my blog. I’ve expressed surprise in the past at the number of people finding me through searches including the word ‘anal’, (my favourite is ‘anal mystery’), but at least that’s sort of expected, it’s what the internet is for after all, but some of the phrases are just downright baffling. View Post

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“I want to do a blog post,” I say to my friend Vicky, who is sat on the sofa opposite me telling me a rather disgusting story about the time she snapped her little toe. “Right now.”

“OK,” she says, “what about?”

“I’m going to interview you,” I tell her.

“Right ho, off you go then.”

Oh dear, I’m on the spot now. “What shall I ask you?” I ask.

“I don’t know! It’s not my interview,” Vicky quite rightly points out.

“If you were a biscuit, what biscuit would you be?” (It is surely just a matter of time before The Times snap me up for a weekly interview slot). View Post

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This week I have spent a significant amount of time on Sarah Beeny’s dating website My Single Friend.

I’m not looking to get rid of New Boyfriend already, (what with being rather fond of him and everything) – I’m actually looking for a special someone for my friend Jacqueline.*

The idea of My Single Friend is that you get a friend to recommend you and the whole thing is slightly less like a painful self-marketing exercise. The principle is sound, but don’t be fooled. It’s basically a way for your single friend to get you to do all the work for them.

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Trying to sell you raincoats in the midst of an unseasonable April heat wave might seem a little foolish, but hey, I always like a challenge. It’s much like trying to get Belle out of bed for school in the morning – difficult, but not impossible, and very satisfying if you do manage it.

If you clicked on the link last week to my creativity feature in Inspired Times magazine, which I’m sure all of you did*, you’ll have read about my friend Sally. I met Sally on a writing retreat in 2009, where we bonded over our shared hands-off parenting style and, although we didn’t realise until later, a mutual crush on one of our tutors.

Since then we’ve become very good friends, so much so that last summer I dragged my kids across the country to stay with Sally and her family in their beautiful cottage in Cambridge. At the time, Sally was very excited about her new business – the Cambridge Raincoat Company – which was in its early stages, and between lounging around her house eating, drinking and generally making myself at home I was allowed to cast my eye over fabric swatches and coat samples. All very exciting. View Post

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It is very distracting. You try to focus your mind on the things you know you have to do, but sometimes it just won’t. Sometimes it just floats about, and you can’t pin it down. You spend a large amount of time staring unhelpfully into the distance and sighing.

Time speeds up and slows down. At all the wrong moments. The time you spend apart feels like years and then when you want time to drag, it’s gone in an instant. Perhaps someone is fiddling with the clocks.

Being in love makes you selfish and boring. Other people try to talk to you about their lives and their problems but you find it hard to be interested. Instead you’re just looking for an opportunity to turn the conversation around, to drop in a name. It’s oh so casual though, surely no one will notice if I just mention him one more time…

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Last week I had a bit of a recycling frenzy. All my boxes were already out on the pavement, and the lorry was due any minute, but suddenly it felt like a Very Good Idea Indeed to see how much paper I could get rid of. I even fell down the stairs a little bit in my excitement, but no one saw that, so we’ll brush over it and move on.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve used my new-found writing career as an excuse to buy and hoard magazines, believing I will spend hours reading and gaining inspiration. Of course it doesn’t happen, because most of the magazines out there are utter shite, full of make-up ads and air-brushed models that make me feel like I should be fasting or sticking my fingers down my throat, so instead I line my study with shelves full of useful boxes of unread magazines, just in case.

“Blimey, this one likes her reading doesn’t she?” I heard one of the recycling collectors say to his mate as they heaved box after box of my old glossy magazines into their van.

Not anymore. Now my shelves are clear, and I can eat guilt free.

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

I haven’t decided yet.

I always quite fancied being a ballerina, but I think I’m past that now. I never really had the thighs for a leotard anyway.

At school, I remember filling in one of those career questionnaires and it telling me I should be an insurance underwriter. Honestly, how dull must my answers have been that the quiz thought I’d get my kicks organising family travel insurance?? Weirdly, years later, I found myself working for an insurance company, training to be an actuary. It was the most hideously boring two years of my working life. Every day I would go to lunch and want to run away for ever. Afternoons were spent resisting the urge to smash my head into my PC screen.

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Blogging, I have discovered, can get you in trouble.

In fact, it is probably broader than that. My mouth gets me in trouble. I have this condition, whereby words fall out of my mouth, or in this case fingers, before I have time to think about them. Apparently there isn’t medication available for Being A Bit Mouthy. Apparently it is just something I will have to learn to control.

The good thing about blogging as opposed to talking at least is that there is a short window of opportunity between typing and pressing ‘publish’ where I can think to myself ‘Really? Do you really want to share that thought? Out loud?’ Quite often I decide that no, it is probably something best kept inside my head, but other times I don’t even stop to consider the consequences.

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