A heartfelt plea....

....to all friends and relatives who buy us boxes of chocolates for Christmas.

*feeble whimper* Please don't!

You can buy us boxes of posh biscuits, because I am not really a biscuit person ~ n.b., this excludes M&S All Butter Viennese Selection, which are not so much biscuits as little pieces of heaven in a mouthful ~ you know when you see that phrase 'all butter' that you're in trouble, don't you? 

There are still SOME LEFT in the biscuit tin.  I swear that having to resist them is sending my blood pressure over the top, and I've got one of those 'well woman' (stupid name) health checks next week, at which some kindly nurse practitioner lady will inform me that I need to lose weight, my BP is teetering, I shouldn't still be smoking and I really need to think about coming off these pain killers.  I will then say "I'm sure ten fags a week can't do much harm, if I come off the painkillers I won't be able to walk, and anyway, I've got better skin for my age than you, so there".   (Reminds me of the time 20 years ago when a doctor told my boyfriend that he was overweight, and he said "well, you've got a big nose".)

Actually, I'm going to refuse to be weighed.  They can't make me.  Surely they can just look at me and make an educated guess?  Which brings me back to the point of this post - THE CHOCOLATES.

This year we received a big two layer box of M&S Belgian chocolates, a family sized tub (why aren't they tins anymore?) of Heroes, and two enormous boxes of Thorntons.  The 'Fairground Favourites' are the best.  OMG, as they say.  There's this one in a yellow and green wrapper, it's an apple cream, oh my goodness....

On Christmas Day I told myself "you can eat as many of them as you like, today, but only today".  Of course, this instruction soon slithered gluttonously downwards into you can eat as many as you can.  I had a tummy ache when I went to bed, and I had merely scratched the surface.  A couple of days later a friend emailed me to say that she was stuffing all the Christmas cake so that it would be gone and she wouldn't have to eat it anymore, or words to that effect.  I so understand this.  This morning, instead of the muesli I would normally eat, I ate all the remaining fudges and caramels (the only ones I can't resist) out of the Heroes, so they'd be GONE.  So I won't have to think about or try to resist them ANYMORE.  They probably contained as many calories as the muesli, and I'll be hungry again by ten o'clock.

But the Thorntons problem remains.... I've tried putting little dishes of them on my husband's bedside shelf so that he will eat them all, but, being a man, he just has one or two per evening.  Last year, I found some Christmas chocolates left in his place-into-which-I-cannot-go, in September.  

So this is my heartfelt plea: I'm honestly not being ungrateful, but please, please, next year, if you must give us chocolates, put a gift tag on them saying that they are just for my husband (he is very possessive of his belongings; I will not mention his star sign), or, better still, give us some of these....

...so that I can go to one of these (and I am so bloody old this year that I can almost remember when it was like this!)

...and buy the bubble bath that is absent from all toiletries gift sets these days ~ as moaned about HERE!

In the meantime, I shall just have to rely on willpower.  
That will work, won't it?  Don't all jeer at once....  I WILL drop a dress size by spring, I will, I will.....

Happy New Year!

 

The other side of sizeism....

I was just browsing Facebook, and came across this article I wrote in 2011, before I had a blog, after noticing the sizeism trend on that site ~ by which I mean so-called 'curvy' women being extremely rude about slim ones, and, more worrying, relating their comments to what men prefer.  

This is the picture mentioned at the beginning of the article - I just looked for it on google images

The link is HERE if you would like to read it; I've just made it public so that you can read it if you're not a Facebook friend (my profile is set to private).  Please let me know if you can't access it, it should be okay.  Thanks!

ps, I've just found the Marilyn Monroe - thin girl one, too, though looking at it now I would imagine she is obsessive about working out rather than anorexic.  Oh, and incidentally ~ a Twitter friend told me that she went to an exhibition of Marilyn's clothes once, and they were tiny.  She was only ever a size 16 occasionally; I read once that all her costumes had to be made in sizes 10-16 because her eating was so erratic.  Let us not forget that a size 10 in the 1950s would probably be a size 6 or 8 now.

Excuse me while I slip into something more comfortable....

Imagine this scenario.  Hunky guy is invited back to gorgeous woman's flat after hot date.

Gorgeous Woman: Help yourself to a drink, and do excuse me while I slip into something more comfortable...

Hunky Guy: But of course!  Opens brandy bottle, smiling, thoughts of black silk and lace running through his mind.

Two minutes later, enter stage left: 
Gorgeous Woman: That's better!  Flops onto sofa.  You can pour me one of those, t0o.

Hunky Guy's mouth drops open.  Gorgeous woman wears not the black lingerie of his fantasies, but a faded AC/DC 1998 tour t-shirt with toothpaste stains down the front, and a pair of man's pyjama trousers with a hole in the knee.

~~~ 

I'm talking about Leezurewear. 

Yes, yes, I know it's spelt leisurewear.  It's just how my sister and I (and, thus, many of our friends) spell it, because we pronounce it in the American way, ie 'lee-surewear' rather than 'leh-surewear'.  Works best if you say it with an American accent, too (at least until you're comfortable with it....).  It's probably not even a real word; should it be two words?  I'll leave my proofreading sister to decide, and no doubt tell me in the comments!

I have not been guilty of the ruining a hot date scenario, but must say that one of the joys of working from home, or just not going out to work, period, is being able to wear leezurewear more often.  In fact, most of the time. 

Socially acceptable leezurewear

I have a selection of leezure trousers.  At the moment I am wearing my rather (un)fetching miscellaneous animal print ones that are too big in the arse and too long.  Until I actually got properly dressed today (at around lunch time) I was wearing them with a pink and white striped vest that I'd worn in bed the night before.  I also own some striking half-mast black velvet trews (£3.99 from Store 21 in Jarrow), and another pair of two-summers-ago blue and white flowery ones, with holes in.  These items will not necessarily be worn with anything matches them.  Because they are leezurewear, and this you wear only for comfort, not for style.  Comfort is all.

Leezurewear: see that casual fit, the ease with which the wearer stands, hand placed comfortably in pocket?

When I worked in an office, the first thing I did when I got home was to get into my old faithfuls, waiting for me upstairs.  The office in which I worked was not one of those that required me to wear anything too smart, but I still had to look respectable.  I went to work dressed in flattering trousers and some sort of smart top, a conscious choice based on aesthetics, unlike the clothes I put on when I got home, which would be ill-fitting, ill matched, and with coffee stains down the front within an hour or so of putting them on (whether I'd drunk coffee or not, it seemed).  

There are different grades of leezurewear.  My sister and I have a name for the one in between at-home-only disgusting garments, and work clothes:  this is socially acceptable leezurewear.  It might be smart leggings and a huge but presentable t-shirt.  Or a natty hat, as worn by actor Josh Holloway, below.  In SAL, you can go shopping, receive visitors, even go to the pub if there is not likely to be anyone in there who you want to impress.   

Actor Josh Holloway models socially acceptable leezurewear

True leezurewear, though, is so unfetching that you can only wear it at home and in the company of friends.  The garments that have become as much part of you as your skin, that you can only wear in front of very close friends, and definitely not in front of someone you might want to have sex with in the future, unless they already love you very much (and even then it might be best not to).  

I'm talking the truly appalling trousers with the holes in the crotch, the once bright yellow band t-shirt that you found you know not where, sporting curious stains that will never quite come out.  
 
My best ever leezure item was a velour jumper bought from a charity shop in Cromer for £1.99.  On a cost-per-wear basis, I probably got 3287 wears per penny out of my black velour jumper.  I had it for around 8 years.  By the time Julia told me I really ought to throw it away (I needed telling), it was so worn out you could actually see through the front of it.

It was a sad day indeed.  Julia used to have a garment we called her David Lee Roth trousers (I can't remember why); they lived with her for about 20 years.  I think at one time they had patches on the back and crotch, and the knees were more hole than trouser.  I don't think she ever got over losing them; not even the size 18-20 jogging bottoms she bought from Cromer Indoor Market (she is a size 10-12) could replace them.

Years ago, on MySpace, I had a photo album on my profile entitled 'My friends in their leezurewear'.  My online and real life chums used to send me pictures of themselves in their favourite items, fully annotated to point out particularly alluring features like baggy knees and embarrassing holes.  It was a good album!  I wish I still had all the pictures; I could have shown you the black velour jumper in all its grisly glory.  

What are your most beloved (and possibly disgusting) items?  The best leezurewear is often appropriated rather than bought.  Back in the early 1990s Julia had a fab t-shirt that an ex-boyfriend of her flatmate had left behind.  It was one of those that was good quality originally, probably why it was such a pleasure to wear.  I then nicked it off her and wore it for many years; I loved it.  It disappeared along with another boyfriend.  I wonder if it's been passed on to anyone else?  There was nothing particularly noticeable about it, it was just great leezurewear.

Me wearing the t-shirt owned by many, in 1996, sporting it in the socially acceptable way, ie, tucked in to still comfortable denim shorts.  It was subsequently stolen by the soon to become ex who took this picture.  Perhaps he only wanted me for the t-shirt in the first place.

.... and now we come to the downside of wearing comfortable clothes because you are at home all the time.  After a while, it becomes really hard to wear anything else.  I do put reasonable clothes on, and make-up and earrings, just to nip to the shops, because if I didn't I would end up looking like a bag lady all the time instead of just 80% of it.  But even then, my respectable clothes are things with stretchy waistbands, no heels, nothing that might be any effort to wear.  This is partly because being at home all the time, sitting down at a laptop, means that wearing shorts like the ones in the picture above is now but a faded, distant memory.  Yes, another downside: when you don't have to make yourself look good for work every day you don't notice when your clothes are getting, shall we say, a little more snug, until you have to actually go somewhere looking proper smart.  That's when you look in the mirror and gasp "where the hell did all that come from???" 

Never mind, though.  You only have to endure looking smart for a few hours, with that held in stomach, being careful not to slosh red wine down your top, etc, and then you can come home, tear all those once-every-six-months clothes off and .... get back into your leezurewear...

...just like actor Josh Holloway... now there's a man who looks like he knows how to stay comfortable....!!

 

 

 

New Year's Resolutions....

Do you still make them?

I don't.  A cold day in January when you might not be at the peak of your energy/positivity levels (to say the least) is not the day to stop doing things you like, or to start to demand great things of yourself.  Also, the giving stuff up type don't work because most people can't deprive themselves of things they love to order; you break bad habits when the time is right for you to do so, not because the calendar's flipped over.  You might suddenly get in the zone for dieting, or capture out of nowhere the willpower to give up smoking, on some random Wednesday in April, not on January 1st.

My thoughts on some popular NYRs:

• Losing weight - well, I first made this one on January 1st 1972, I think, and did so for many more years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.  Obviously never that successfully or I wouldn't have kept making it for 43 years!
• Giving up smoking - see paragraph above the starfish picture.
• Going to the gym - signing up for a gym in January then not going is such a cliche I'm not even going to mention it (oops...).
• Be a nicer and more tolerant person generally - that will work until something really gets on my nerves, which might be in about two hours' time when I'm in Morrissons.

Happy new year, peoples!  I hope y'all have a good one, and celebrate the evening in whichever way you see fit.  I shall be sitting in bed watching The Walking Dead, and will probably not even notice when the clock strikes midnight! 

You are what you.... wear!

This morning I was going out shopping, dressed in summery patterned trousers, suede ankle boots, and an oversized, hooded (and rather scruffy) sweatshirt belonging to my husband.  He said to me, "You look as though you're on the way home from Glastonbury".  It occurred to me that perhaps, mentally, I am always on the way home from Glastonbury - the Glastonbury of 20 years ago, anyway (older person getting sniffy about how such events aren't what they used to be!).  

On the way home from Glastonbury, 1993!

Anyway, I was thinking, on the way to Morrissons, not only about how we dress to express our personalities in a conscious way, but also how we tend towards different styles, as a subconscious thing.  A few years back I worked for a woman who was younger than me but much more 'straight' (please note: I am not talking about sexual orientation here!! - I mean that her idea of a fun night out was probably a Celine Dion concert) and I remember her asking me if I would ever get my hair cut.  

"Why don't you have it cut into a nice bob?" asked she, to which I replied, "Because I'm not a 'nice bob' sort of person."  

Not a 'nice bob' sort of person ~ 1990

Which kinda summed it up, really.  I always found office clothes difficult, which is because I am not one of nature's admin workers.  Couldn't do that neat skirt, tights and shoes bit.  It was easiest when I was just given a uniform, like for the Nationwide Building Society - I love jobs with uniforms, you don't have to think about what to wear each morning!  I used to find that my work clothes were too 'square' (lovely old-fashioned phrase!) for my normal wear.  I felt almost restricted by them, in the same way as I did the daft office rules.  I think the preferences of your younger days stay with you, too.  I wouldn't wear it these days because I think it would make me look like Bet Lynch, but I always find myself edging towards the leopard print - I try to keep it just for things like make-up bags now, though!  Though my husband is not in the first flush of youth by any means, I am instructed, when buying clothes for him, to ask myself this question before I make a purchase: Would Liam Gallagher wear it?  If the answer is "you gotta be kidding", I must leave it in the shop.

At the height of my rock chickery, 1990

When I was at the height of my rock chickery I always wore short skirts, suede boots, denim, leopard print, huge belts, etc; but I didn't think I frequently go to The Town & Country Club to see Thunder, thus I must dress like a rock groupie - I just did.  I don't anymore; I've moved gradually into the slightly boho-chic look, though not always with a great deal of chic, it has to be said. It wasn't a conscious decision but, of late, my eye tends to be caught by patterned trousers, floaty tops, odd jacket-ish-shrug-ish-waistcoat-ish garments, and the odd scarf!  I try to resist the scarf thing a bit, though - have you noticed how writers always wear them, artfully draped?!  I don't want to look like a middle-aged writer, I really don't.  I draw the line at witty earrings, too.  

Me and my pal Lesley, 2012.  

We may be in the autumn of our lives but we spit on colour co-ordinating separates!!

My sister, who is much more conservative in outlook than me, usually dresses like a smart city office worker.  Okay, she can do 'bag lady' as well as I can, when at home, and can still be seen in an Aerosmith t-shirt if you catch her early enough on a weekend morning, but her well cut dresses and classic tops express how she is, I suppose!  How anyone can be bothered to wear posh dresses when they don't have to is beyond me, but we're all different!  She wore lycra mini skirts and and over the knee boots twenty-odd years ago, too (Julia, remember the black stetson?) but we've just moved in different ways.  

Jools in one of her many smart frocks!

Often, though, people use the way they look as their identity, don't they?  The uniform of the punk, or the biker - or, one that always makes me laugh, the new age traveller types who want to be so 'individual' but actually wear as much of a uniform as the conservative city gent - the dreadlocks, the facial piercing, the tie-dyed trousers, the ex-army jacket.  

As instantly recognisable as the stockbroker in his designer suit...!  People who really are individual don't need a wacky hairstyle to prove it (that's a quote from a character in one of my books!).

For the lacking in confidence, assuming a certain mode of dress can given you an 'in' into a certain club, too - think geeky oddball blokes wearing heavy metal band t-shirts, for instance!! Um.......

Wayne and Garth... or is it???!!

Last of all, I give you the truly insecure ~ the fashion victim who spends £800 on a handbag because it's 'the thing to have'... because that handbag is not a handbag at all.  It's a placard saying "I am not only at the cutting edge of what is hot, I also have enough disposable income to buy it.  Thus, I am better than you".    They don't realise that on the back of the placard it says "I am desperate for approval and admiration."

Not quite sure where else I am going with any of this, huge subject that could be a much longer article - I'd love to hear about your own clothing preferences and any general opinions on this!

THE BEST SALES PLOY EVER

....I bet you thought I was going to tell you how to sell tons of books, didn't you?  Well, it's nothing to do with that!

This is it.

Weightwatchers desserts

They are about 130 calories each (lots of different sorts, my current favourite is the strawberry meringue).  They come in packs of two, and they're GORGEOUS.


The clever sales ploy is putting them in packs of two.

You're trying to lose some weight and you see them in Morrissons and you buy them.  At only 130 calories they can't do any harm, can they?  Later on you eat one, and if you're quite strong willed you save the other one until the next day.  Then, because they're so lovely, next time you're in the supermarket you buy two packs of two; maybe the strawberry meringue, and the chocolate brownie.

Back at home you're not quite so strong willed as the day before, and this time you eat one after dinner, and the other one from the packet a few hours later, whilst watching telly.  Next day you remember how lovely they were, and eat the third one at lunch time.  Followed by the fourth one at about four pm, because they're only 130 calories each, and that's quite reasonable for an afternoon snack, isn't it?

You have now eaten 520 calories worth of zero nutrition, probably extra to the calories you would have otherwise eaten had you not discovered Weightwatchers desserts.

 Thus, you don't lose any weight.

Thus, you resume the diet the following Monday.  Diet resumed (in your head, anyway) you know you'll need low calorie ways to satisfy your sweet tooth.  So, whilst in the supermarket buying all your diet food, you buy a packet of Weightwatchers desserts, promising yourself that you will only eat one per day after dinner.  Of course, you don't.

And so it goes on.

I can see myself buying these lovely, wretched little things forever.

"Curvy" versus skinny...

I wrote this on Facebook in about September 2011

I have noticed, of late, a new trend, both on Facebook and in those emails that go round and round the block. 

I imagine you will have seen either or both of the two following examples:

1.  A picture of a naked fat woman, artfully posed and (no doubt) skilfully airbrushed.  She is beautiful, and has a mane of shampoo advert hair.  There is an article alongside the picture, showing an apparently offensive advert in some gym, asking if you want to be a mermaid or a whale this summer.

2.  A picture of Marilyn Monroe in a white bikini, next to a picture of a girl in a bikini who has either dieted off two stone too many, or is anorexic.  The caption is something along the lines of men preferring curvy women.

On Facebook, both these posts provoke many comments along the lines of  “Yay!  Let’s hear it for curvy girls!”  “And she was a size 16!” “Men prefer a bit of meat on the bone, not all these stick insects!”  “I’m a size 20 and proud of it!”  On one I was reading the other day, it became a rant by size 16-20 women against their slimmer sisters, all of whom were assuring each other than men preferred ‘curvy’ girls.  (When I posted a short comment along the lines of this article, I was told to ‘feck’ off!)

I would just like to say that I am neither slim nor fat, but someone who is a size 14-16 and looks a hell of a lot better when a size 12-14.  This is not relevant, but I want to make it clear that I am arguing from neither camp.

Imagine the opposite.  Someone posts a picture of a well known slim Goddess of the screen.  Farrah Fawcett.  Brigitte Bardot.  Next to this picture, there is a paparazzi snap of an overweight, little known soap star on the beach, displaying a huge arse, thunder thighs, a wobbly stomach, cellulite, etc.  The caption would read “Men prefer slim women!”

Can you imagine what an outrage that would cause?  Can you see how ludicrous it is?

Marilyn Monroe (ditto Diana Dors, and others frequently given as examples of the ‘curvier’ woman) was well proportioned and curvaceous.  She was reported to be a size 16 only occasionally, and let us not forget that a size 16 in the 1950s was inches smaller than the size 16 of today (it was 38-28-38; nowadays it is approximately 38-33-42).  Also, she had an hourglass figure, and did not suffer the double chins, bingo wings, seven months pregnant appearance and jodhpur thighs of many of today's size 16s.

Some men like women rounded and ample.  Some like ‘em fat.  Some go for the boyish figure.  Most, though, I believe, prefer attractively slim.  However, that is not really the point.  A few of my (slimmer) friends have read some of these articles and the ensuing comments, and found them to be insulting to slim women.  As one said, if she slagged off fat birds the way some fat (whoops, sorry, I mean ‘curvy’!) birds slag off the slim ones, she’d be called every bitch under the sun.

I find it depressing that these posts and the comments that follow seem to be aiming to put women in competition with each other for acceptance by men, too.  Now, imagine this scenario.  A man posts a picture of a bit of 1950s beefcake (oh, I dunno; Marlon Brando at his slightly porkier stage, maybe!), next to a picture of some skinny bloke in swimming trunks.  It is captioned “Women prefer beefier men!”  Lots of men comment “Yay, let’s hear it for the bigger guy!”  “Women like something to cuddle, not some stick insect!!”  Hmm, not likely to happen, is it? 

One of my slim friends pointed out something else that is rarely mentioned in these type of articles: being overweight is bad for your health.  It is bad for your heart, your cholesterol levels, your joints, your back, not to mention your sleep patterns and your psychological well-being. 

So, mermaid or whale?  I think I’ll go for the mermaid; without the fish tail, though, because my legs are my best feature.  Unlike my middle area, which is fat.  And no, it’s not curvy; it’s FAT.  Anyone can be whatever size they want to be; most of all, it is not a competition.