7 February - White & Cream & Taupe

Taupe did not exist when I was growing up. I don't think I ever heard of this colour. I'd have called it a boring sub standard bastard hybrid of camel and uh, not sure what's in there? is it purple? grey?

Anyway I was with C. and we were in Ledbury rd. and she dragged me into this shop, can't remember the name but it's next to diane von furstenberg. It was full of white, cream, beige, honey, taupe, caramel, froth and a few other block colours. Well blue and black and maybe brown. There must have been some grey there too. And sold lots of items you'd find in a hotel room I guess. Or in the malibu house of boring Jennifer Aniston.

I want to know who decided these are the colours of a sophisticated life? Since when is the donna karan wannabe life the life we want here? I like plain colours and I like white because it spells clean but I only have to go past a White Company or for one of their catalogues to drop off a magazine to feel repelled by the john pawsoness of it all. I was thinking that if a non wasp type person was brought into those shops they'd think someone died (white is the colour of death in part of the east. I'm not sure about Africa) or they'd think a very dull person lives in a house all cashmere toffee throws and slippers. I'm all for textures but I'd rather live in a Chinese fabric store room than in this nordic twilight mushiness of colours.

Rant over.

21 November - West

I wouldn't give a damn to be honest but friends have a shop in Westfield so at some point I had promised I'd go and cast my eye as shopper and report back on what I thought. So we drove in on Sunday at 4.30pm and said we'd do an hour.
In fact an hour was plenty, half of it is not open yet, you know, the much touted designer village section for example or the cinema etc.
It was like being in an airport. In that sense it was good, there was space. The various cafes seemed to be doing excellent trade. I know the footfall has alraedy reached 2m but how many bought, I wouldn't know. I have no desire for larger versions of shops I already know and don't much care for. I fail to be excited by a twice or three times the size of an Oasis for example as there's just twice the same stuff.
There were several shops from other countries so that was a novelty but again, I had no desire to go in, tough bless they'd have hugged you if you did, those poor sales assistants baking under the lights and with no one much to serve. It's a long day when you're twenty something and you have to work on a sunday on a shift till 9.3opm or 10pm.
Give me Harvey Nicks any time, just big enough not to get tired walking around, tough the big malls clearly bank on you getting tired and thirsty and all that.
Parking was easy, but so it was/is at Canary Wharf and who wans to go there...

2 October - Shock Horror Clothes from Sainsburys

So I found myself with the clothes from the day (which I didn't want to wear the following day) and/or the scruffy stuff you wear to paint/clean/re-decorate. It was 8pm and in a part of London that's not that stylish. What to do? Whilst I was thinking about it I went into a big Sainsbury to get some groceries and lo and behold, they do clothes. They're as cheap as Primark only very boring, sort of M&S basics. And so it is that I broke the 1 month of not buying anything for mysel with a £7.50 pair of trousers (down from £10) in a dark grey/blue that I've actually never owned anything in but seems a nice colour and a matching light grey/pale blue cardie that from a distance could pass for cashmere but at the touch feels bizarre. That was £9. Some knickers for £1.50 and voila', ready for work the next day.

I realise that £20 may still be a big budget. Would have done marvellously on it down some flea market/second hand stall but necessity called.

This may still be a very boring post but it's not as boring as it could be if I started writing about my re-decorating all consuming weeks. I wonder if one has a mansion if it all gets multiplied for months on end. In fact I know it does. My lovely headgirl friend who married in early May is still not finished at her large but not so huge abode in Essex. And she's angry... with workmen. She tells me she's had to do some finishing jobs afther they er... finished. Welcome to my world. Maybe not all people would notice the small splashes of paint on windows but I do and they have to come off or else. And who's available to do it when I want them done? Only me.

16 July - Maybe am a bloke

As this is what blokes do, they don't loiter in fashion shops but they do hang around music shops. There isn't a day I don't purchase something and i berate myself for doing so, I don't need anything for chrissakes. So in an attempt not to buy clothes/shoes/trinkets, I just head to HMV to buy something I definetly want, the new Leila Arab cd, on the Monday of its release.
Alas it's not in the racks, they haven't unpacked it yet. So I walk out with the latest Jamie Liddell (the boy at the till is impressed, we have a little exchange about my choice), some remastered 4 cd Led Zep down from £50 to £15, a book of Peter Cook & Dudley Moore sketches because it's £2 and maybe some will make me laugh, and a couple of other books to use as gifts but which will probably languish in my gift box, which is more correctly described as a gift trunk.

The bill comes to just over £40. Not bad on the impulse side. Took ten mins and all. This has got to stop but I don't know how...

20 April - tbc

Hell is Tesco. I could leave it there really but no, I have something to say naturellement.
tbc

2 April - Fat blokes & smelly shops

Easter, eggs will be hatching… which brings me to the guys at work whose wives are having or have recently had babies and who have put on masses of weight. Is this in sympathy? Is there no going out, no going away, no pride left for these men once they’re about to be with child? All this letting it all go/hang south? Can someone explain this strange phenomenon to me? Is it a fiendish plot on the part of the mothers-to-be to make them look similar and in this mirroring they don't stray? Or not unless they're paying?
These are people who cannot benefit from photoshopping, not when they are real and in 3D all around me. Men I’d previously found attractive - well some of them, proximity does funny things even if you’re not sharing a trailer on a film. Will they lose the extra stones when they're sleeplessly pacing up and down? Is nature making them stronger to cope with that?
Talking of which, alighted at Paul Oakenfold’s website the other day and nearly dropped my fork. I mean, in the photo he looked dishy or what? But how is that done? I want to know. It’s … just impossible to transform a person to such an extent. Ok this is a boring train of thought.

How about this one?
Never enter a second hand record shop if you have time to kill in Soho, not one that says half price sale.
It will be full of blokes and an undefinable smell that was not fresh or pleasant. Maybe it was just the old vinyl? And do these guys remember to travel with wet wipes so that they can clean their hands after shifting through all those alphabetically arranged cards with the title/artist/price and the sleeve? My hands were filthy after a mere few minutes and I do have the handy wipes.
Was considering they all looked like they could do with a conversation with a female who’s not their mother once in a while. And how about the fact that I sort of had to fight my corner to get some space and finger through said cards. Nobody conceded any room to me. I then deliberately fingered the cards not methodically one by one like the blokes were doing, as if I’d miss god knows what rarity by not checking each individual one (which let’s face it would have kept me there all day), but sort of skipped many. I almost wanted to put them back in the wrong pigeonhole just to see if anyone had a fit. I eventually found a couple of CDs I wouldn’t have minded owning at £3 or so and made my way to the counter. This is where they had had the good idea of keeping the real bargain bins and so the counter was swamped by blokes with no purpose in life. It took me 5 secs to decide I didn’t really need those 2 CDs and aborted the mission. I just couldn’t take the smell. I know I can get similarly single minded about.. shoes or clothes but ‘our’ shops are pleasant environments. This was like a toilet in Camden.

8 March - Medicals & Nichols

Colleague goes to company medical. She comes back scratching her arms, the plasters applied after the blood samples were taken are itchy. I say I don’t like them either but I disliked more the patches/electrodes that they put on your chest as you take the biking machine and puff along to test your lungs/recovery capacity etc. She says they only do that test for older people.

There you go, my weekly reminder that ‘they’ around me are 15/20 years younger.
his weren’t enough to wound my pride, there’s a picture in today’s freebie paper of an ex assistant of mine/ours who is being written about in connection with having a handbag accessory removed by security before boarding a Eurostar because the hideously expensive accessory looks like a medieval mini weapon. Aside from registering that JJ looks pretty good and is lying about her age (she couldn’t have been 16 then so she can’t be 35 now) the offending words that nearly send me to take the rest of the day off are ‘Fashion Buyer at Harvey Nichols’. Yes, they have more than one but I think she’s the main one (had run into some bio detail of hers in previous years’.

What can I say? Well done and sorry I patronised you plenty in those days. But in those days truly you were not that smart. And I knew lots more. And I thought just caring for fashion was stoooopid and you were a rich daddy's girl. AN said too last time we met for a catch up and he was the company lawyer, he should know....Age improves plenty of areas. I guess I better stop there in case I ever want to be invited to some inner sanctum super 'practically given away for free' sale at your nice shop.