In Memorium

Not long after I first moved out of my mothers' place and in with a bunch of friends I discovered a quick route home from the bus stop; now, bearing in mind that this route cut a twenty minute walk down to about ten minutes, can you blame me for using it? Even when it wasn't raining? Even if it meant cutting across a graveyard?
Now, I don't watch horror movies, prefering instead films with singing, wigs and spontaneous dancing over films with blood, graveyards and psychotic ugly people with mismatching eyes. And it shows; I've seen maybe one horror flick in the last three years, and it scared the hell out of me.
Although it's been established I'd be the one who runs screaming up the stairs whilst wearing high high high heels, with the lights off. Who is found by the killer because of a stray piece of glitter reflecting the lone pinprick of light from a distant star or two.
Yeah, I thought about it a lot. And my flatmate collection didn't help one bit.

But in general, I'm as easy going as my wallet.

The shortcut through the graveyard wasn't a problem on the days when the dead are popular- and I mean popular in terms of Christmas, Easter and Mothers' day, rather than in a usurously interested way.
*shudders*

One night, meandering back home via the shortcut hindered slightly by stupid shoes and sunglasses, one of the locals yelled something at me through an open window.

Just to clarify; you know that old joke about people from the Cotswolds? How a virgin is someone under thirteen who can run faster than her brother? That sums the area I was living in up really rather well, despite being considerably further North.

I think. Geography was never my strong point- but even if it had been, all we ever did in High School Geoggers were things like 'the average size of a grain of sand!' and 'soil fomation!'
Something for unimaginative people, with a high tolerance for excessive use of exclamation marks!

But before I rudely interrupted myself, I was telling a story. 'Listening closely, boys and girls?'
The shout from the window spun me round, as I tried to work out through a chemical induced haze where the noise originated from.
"Oi, you!"
"Oui!" I replied, hopelessly, helplessly cheery, turning in the direction of the man puffing his way across the turf. Silently relieved the dead hadn't been talking to me, I pushed the sunglasses further up my nose to hide my eyes. Amazed by the seeming fact that there really is an explanation for anything- even disembodied voices, I forgot all about the man heading towards me, wondering instead why anyone would choose to live in a house where all windows point towards the graveyard.

"Don't get smart missy," he was saying when I tuned back in. "Now, what yer doin' in 'ere then?"

Depths of boundless ennui.

"Now, am I goin' ter 'ave ta call the cops?"
"Why would you want to do that?" I asked curiously. "It's hardly an Ancient Egyptian burial ground; grave robbing just wouldn't be worth the broken nails, now would it?"

Pause.

"Yer what?"

I smiled sweetly at him; "Oh, maybe you can help me!" I said brightly. "I'm looking for my grandmother; have you seen her? Jeanie Silverton."
Cut off in mid stutter, he resorted to silence.
"She died 1989," I went on patiently. "Any ideas?"

He escorted me to a patch of recent graves, then he started looking for my fictional tombstone as I shuffled away, heels sinking in the damp turf.
"Oi!" He yelled after me. "Where yer goin'!?"
I looked back over my shoulder as I walked off- quickly, as I had (and still have) no desire to be found murdered in an alleyway wearing mismatching underwear and with a high level of chemicality nonsense in my system.
I called to him, scurrying away all the while, "I'll be right back with you if you'd just keep on looking! I appreciate the help; if you just hang on a tic I'll fetch you a spade."

He walked gingerly across towards me, and I took the shades off- hardly going to be able to run away from the scary madman if I ran into a tombstone and break my knees, now was I? Priorities, priorities; my pupils were the least of my worries.
I paused in the gateway and took my heels off.

"What the fuck!?" He yelled rudely, growing increasingly out of breath.
Walking and talking; difficult business, oh yes indeed. Requires a high level of fitness, and all that.

I couldn't help myself, but I did try to stop. "The bitch had herself buried with her engagement ring! Do you have any idea how much the thing's worth?"

And then I ran for it.

Domesticity

Contrary to popular opinion, I can cook. I can.
*stamps foot*
Just not in the kitchen in my flat; advertised as coming with 'all cooking essentials,' out of the five of us, none of us thought to check for a hob- foolishly, as it turns out, as it seems to be missing. But what we do have is a fully workable extractor fan above where the hob should be, so if anyone wants to swap?

And I'm a student! I can't possibly be expected to be able to cook anything that doesn't require frying or boiling; I've only recently worked out how to do pasta- thrilling domestic stuff. Big greasy fry ups I can do*, pancakes I can sort of toss and eggs I can, in theory, boil.
Whereas the only thing I can do in the oven is cheese on toast. With onion, to add that little bit of class.
In my defense, I moved out of my mothers' house when I was 17; as such, I learned to cook as a matter of basic survival, as opposed to having any thoughts of health and the four key food groups rattling around in my head; but the essential elements of a healthy diet were incorporated; they are salt, saturated fat and alcohol, right?

Oh, and I lost two stone, so something was going right. But I digress.

Somehow, regardless of its myriad short-comings (key among these would be the coffee coloured tiles), the kitchen has become the conversational centre of the flat. I blame this on the broken boiler; without heating we've been spending increasing amounts of time in the kitchen with oven on and door open.
We might therefore be going to hell for such flagrant abuse and waste of electricity, but at least we'll arrive with toes and fingers intact.

Do people still get chilblains?

Or we might even have our knees broken for not being able to pay our bills, but whatever. S'ages away, innit?

Last night I was to be found sitting on the kitchen counter, with unnecessarily tall Rick stood in front of me as I straightened his waist length hair- unlike normal long boy hair, it's nice.
Clean, brushed. No split ends or any of that greasy nonsense boykind normally go in for when they grow their hair past shoulder-length; not that I'm generalising here, of course. Ahem. Anyway, as I was saying; finding a position that's comfy for the hour or so it takes to straighten his hair is tough, but this one seems to work.
As I worked away** we talked and got to know one another a tad better; he's Absent Toby flatmate's friend, not mine.

It shows.

An hour after starting, I ran my fingers through his finally straight hair checking for any missed knots and kinks. As my fingers brushed the back of his neck he flinched and I pulled back.
"Sorry," he said slightly sheepishly, "I have this thing about the back of my neck."
"Oh yes?" I inquired genteely, just knowing I'd regret it.
"Oh, yes indeed. Can you just imagine this for me; a piece of warm buttered toast touching the back of your neck?"
I flinched.
"Yes! You see?"

I didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him I'd just burned myself on the straighteners, so I paused, trying frantically to think of something to say. 'Bless you' just wouldn't cut it, not would 'well.. I can't say it's ever occurred to me.'
The seconds ticked past and he blushed, pulling away. Just then, the toaster made a loud pinging noise and tossed two pieces of toast up into the air.
Perfect timing; I laughed, he laughed, and now I have a new- albeit rather strange- friend.


* Just not for myself, brand new vegetarian that I'm trying to be.
** I always wanted to be a hairdresser. Then I started wearing heels, and a love affair began; and I realised it would be impossible to sustain such dizzying heights and stand up all day. So I came to university instead.

All of a Dither- the start of it all

The setting is three days after Christmas, a worryingly dingy little cafe where one can buy breakfast for the price of a coffee in Starbucks. For most of the Christmas break, if anyone had been around to look, I could be found moping in the corner of this dingy little spot; but this day was a bit more special, as I determinedly savoured my last day of loneliness.
Bloody hate Christmas. Love my friends. But that's another story, innit?

Nursing my coffee and staring into space, I jumped when she came over, drawing aside the gargantuan plant obscuring the many layers of grime that, in turn, obsured the window pane and turned the bright winter sunlight into a murky green glow.
"Anyone sitting here?" She demanded, throwing her bag down on the table and throwing herself into a seat.
"Well, I guess not," I said slightly sulkily, blinking in the sudden light. She tossed her windswept hair back from her face using her forearm, an action that looked for all the world like it was lifted from a shampoo advert. Except I doubt shampoo models would have got rain across the table and all over their new coffee acquaintance.

"Here," she said then, pulling a sodden book out of her water-logged bag. "You left this in the SU bar about a week ago- I meant to give it back to you before now, but I wanted to read it first."

Plato's Symposium.

I watched as a puddle slowly spread from the book to the table, moving only to rescue my coffee before it was swept away in the tide of slowly oozing rain water..
"Well!" She said defensively, "it was in fine condition when I had it! You have it back for.. " She looked at her watch. ".. About a minute and it's all tatty. Is that anyway for you to treat a book?"
Well indeed; I assume she was talking about the state of my uni course books, which are all well written on.

Despite having never seen her before, I began to see a whole lot more of her; within the week she was showing me a new side to the city, as she showed me how to sneak into almost anywhere.
I won't go into too much detail about the time she dragged me off to a safari park, on discovering I'd never seen a wolf, monkey, rhino, giraffe or similar wild beasties, because it was evidently a big big mistake.
"No! I'm not going to nature!"
"But you are though!"
"No! I'm not! Nature's come to me already- have you not seen the ants in my flat!?"

Argh, and she made me feed some four legged beastie as well, while we were there; from watching Bambi, I'll take a guess and accuse them of being deers.
Ick, je n'aime pas.


More recently, I was in bed, idly drawing patterns into the darkness with my index finger and a thought hit me.

"Shit, I think I fancy Rosie."

All of a dither

I'm not usually one to shy away from the limelight, but I prefer my audience not to openly mock me.

There's this girl, you see, who we'll call Rosie as that is her name; I haven't changed anybody's names here, as I realise if I did I'd forget and there'd be huge gaping irrevocably discordant elements to the stories, as Vera changes to Alice who changes to Karen who changes to Beatrice who changes to Donna who maybe changes to Susan, who might eventually change to Karl as I get more and more confused. I could do this for hours.
You can see where this is going already, can't you?

Procrastination.

It's one of the things I really am remarkably remarkable at.

As a result of teeming and distracting uncertainty as to what to do about Rosie, coffee and my favourite book of the year so far are no longer helping. Far from it, in fact.
So! I've turned to Jane Austen for solace; she was right about everything else after all, so why shouldn't she be right about the courting rituals of the modern human? In depth study is making it clear to me that relationships aren't just about Willoughby's good looks and charm, or Wickham's easy manner; they're based on other, deeper things.
Leaving out Hugh Grant's endearing stutter, and Gwyneth Paltrow's strangely seductive accent.

This is, of course, proving to be something of a revelation to me.

Of Travels and Tourism

I've just found a grey hair, and pullled it out.
As such, I'm going to tell a story of the days when I was young and hip, decidedly grubby and found the idea of hitchhiking across a couple of continents rather appealing.
Yeah, it's been a while.
And I've just come off the phone to some friends I made when I was scraping my way through India, and they demanded to know when I was going back.
Our door's always open for you!

While doing the whole travelling on the cheap thing, I spent many a night sleeping on trains, buses and in airports- and on many a roof and two bathroom floors, but that's not the point here. If I'd tried the roof trick in Russia I'd have caught hypothermia and died. And, of course, probably rolled off the roof into a snowdrift, or such like.
Now, I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but I hate having things on my feet. I may simply adore shoes, but not indoors.
Curled up in my seat on the Trans-Siberian, bare feet revelling in their escape from the confines of thick socks and hiking boots, I fell asleep. Waking, I found a group of Russian vendors gathered around the window, jostling one another as they crowded round the gap.
It took me slightly longer to work out where I was, and.. "hang on, aren't we still moving?"
Nothing gets past me.

The guy on the seat opposite, a fellow traveller but somewhat more of a native (he clearly knew what he was doing; he even brought a cloth-on-a-stick to scrape the layers of caked on dirt from the window pane) was leaning out of the window bartering with the vendors in Russian.
My Russian is extremely limited; I decided not to spend too muich time at all in Russia after spending two years studying Russian history at A-level.
Communism? Good in theory, a complete disaster in practice.

This being so, I didn't quite realise what he was doing.
Where are my boots?

He turned back to me with a big smile and gave me a handful of roubles.
Is good price, buy you better shoes, he said.

"But that's so 80s. 1880s."

“Precise words aren’t eloquent, eloquent words are not precise.” This is the dilemma; which should I choose?

Some guys just aren't into your opinion- your participation is welcome but they act as though your presence isn’t strictly necessary, and your own personal pleasure?
Forget about it.
He comes from the old school of thought, where his partners' pleasure is null and void; inconsequential although not something to begrudge her should she ever teeter beyond the precipice so well documented in Jackie Collins’ novels. As ‘twere.
They’re the ones you can nudge, hint, physically point in the right direction or even actually tell them to pack it the fuck in and he still doesn't get the point, change his stride.
God forbid he should lose his focus- he might forget to hold your head in place to ‘help’.
“Look,” I said, “I know what I’m doing, trust me. Now take your hands off the back of my head or I swear next time I’ll bite you.”

To be more precise, this guy doesn't care about you and he doesn’t try to pretend otherwise at any point beyond the pick-up. It's very selfish, it's the height of self-absorbity, and it really, really kills all the fun- to the extent that it drives a stake through its heart, burns it and scatters the remains at a crossroads; it thoroughly ascertains that any chance of a revival is out of the question.
While I’m usually all for putting your needs before those of others, I just don’t approve in this case- if I've brought a gentleman caller home then I'm going to ensure that he enjoys himself, but I want to be in on the fun too, and I have a few requests of my own.
Call me selfish, but I like to think that he's there because he's into me in some way, not because I just happen to be the right size or shape to fit into his personal little ritual. I want to feel sparks, a little chemistry, like he wants me.
I certainly have no desire to be treated like a blow up doll and manhandled. I do not want to be made to feel like an interchangeable character in someone else's script- I want to be able to collaborate and god forbid improvise even just a teensy bit; I never thought variety could ever be seen as a big bad till this.



So! To summarise; my dear almost stranger if I do agree to sleep with you, treat me like a person and not a personal toy for you to get your mucky adult kicks from, as such outlandish behaviour will result in me kicking you out half way through.
Rude? You bet.
Time and experience will not change this.
Nor, surprisingly enough, will yelling derogatory names as you stomp off down the stairs; because really honey, I couldn’t care less if you’ve never been kicked out by a pissed off, far from satisfied female before. All I was thinking as I waved you off?
What a fucking waste of an evening. Oh, and also, try not to wake the neighbours on your way out.

I promise treating girlkind nicely won’t result in them stalking you, begging for future sexual favours- if that’s what was worrying you, baby.
And one last tip- go get that back waxed; let’s minimize the amount of unpleasant suprises for future girls, shall we?

It’s what the sisterhood’s all about, after all.

Up to the Minute

Noticing the door was ajar, I wobble over in my snazzy new secretary heels and hold it steady as I knock. Through the gap I see him rise quickly from the desk. He crosses the room and stands with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out of the window at the impenetrable cloud of grey that is London in springtime. Knocking once more, I step into the room; a few seconds before I hear him clear his throat and bark 'enter!' over his shoulder towards the door, in a well practised gesture.
I stand and wait, trying not to laugh- he's just so frightfully pretentious.
He addresses me without turning around "Miss Clarke," he says. "It's your second week working with us now. Is there anything you'd like to tell me? First impressions, that sort of thing."

I think, and my hand raises automatically to play with my hair; the archetypal pose for the Deep In Thought.

I could confess that it was me who broke the paper shredder. I could tell him I know exactly how long I have to tap on the desk-top with my fingernails before the other deskbound folk begin to get annoyed. I think about telling him how many stops it takes me to get to the pub over the road; and how it always takes two more to get back.
A plane passes the window.
09:34.
I smile slightly; I could tell him I know exactly how many planes pass the office windows on any given day that he has me deskbound.
Or, I think as I adjust my seamed stockings, I could tell him how very disappointed I get when nobody in the office notices my carefully constructed clothing references.
I hesitate; where should I start? "No," I say. "I don't think there's really anything."

He turns around then, and catches me frowning at my myriad reflections in the panelled glass of his bookcase. I bite my lip, widen my eyes, and try to look like I'm at least trying to be helpful.
"Nothing at all?" He askes hopefully, scanning my face.

I think about how the hardened office women call me 'Immy' with an air of forced joviality. I think about how one of them has already asked to borrow my yellow trenchcoat and my Gina shoes, despite being a size sixteen and one shoe size up on me. The memory makes me wince, so I move on; I could explain how I spilt coffee on my keyboard, and now the escape key won't work, along with all the others along the top left hand corner of the keyboard. But I don't know what they do, so it's fine.
I look up at him and smile a teeny bit- confused, but I want to help!

He sighs.
"Imogen," he says. "We're all playing on the same ballpark here." My smile freezes in place, and I notice another plane pass the window.
09:42
He keeps talking; "...you're piece on the football match at such-and-such a primary school wasn't quite what I had in mind, Miss Clarke." He finally gestures for me to sit and I do, crossing my legs demurely. He leans across the desk to say, almost conspiratorially, "too many like, literary refernces, you know. Like, our readers, they just won't pick up on them. I'm a university man myself of course, but they're like, too oblique for the general public."
I stare at him, and find disgust is a hard ally in such close quarters; my gaze lingers perhaps overlong on the monobow, the pierced ear, the Mickey Mouse tie.
I want to tell him I didn't go to the fucking football match, how I detest football; it takes a hot player to enable even the slightest show of interest, and a primary school match just wouldn't cut it. I want to explain how I went round the city Banksy spotting, and wrote about that.
More than anything, I want him to know there are no literary references in the piece; how I asked Mrs Next Door's son about the match. How he gave me all the details I needed in exchange for an Easter egg and a promise to babysit.
Another plane passes the window behind him.
09:54
"So Miss Clarke, I just wanted to ask you in light of this; is there anything you'd like to discuss with me? No problems settling in? I like to think we have a jovial friendly atmosphere. The pieces you submitted just seemed so promising."
Ah, I think; literary refernces it is then.
I wonder if he noticed that none of the pieces I submitted to get this job were most decidedly not sports related. I wonder if he knows he has a nickname in the outer office, and whether he's aware of how many times he's abused the word 'like' in the last twenty minutes.

I hesitate, and then something clicks with the undeniable immediacy of a stiletto heel in a hospital corridor.

"I'm bored," I say.

Blog, meet N.R.

I currently have the nose of a healthy labrador, and eloquence and imagination are far from forthcoming. So to spare a weeks worth of posts (assuming, of course, that I don't die and have to pass on my mantle more permanantly) in which I complain on a near consistent level about how poorly I am, I'm instead passing the torch onto one who currently surpasses me in the upbeat and suitability stakes. Who says I'm self-centred and selfish?
Once again- play nicely. Please.


Not that I mean to steal this for any longer than necessary (that just wouldn't be nice), but your regular author's begged off as she's "poorly sick"- wimp; this is what comes from partying hard while you have a heavy cold.
Hardly attractive now, is it?
And we must think of these things. Imogen's currently curled up in bed with Vogue, a bowl sized mug of coffee and an easter egg; Vogue's full of people who managed to successfully detox after the whole Christmas and New Year binge, so the coffee and the chocolate are to make her feel better for being a complete failure with no self control to speak of.

The very presence of the easter egg is a prime example of this.

It's also a prime example of her ridiculous tendancy to spontaneous food shop, but that's already been covered; "it seemed like a fabulous idea at the time!" Which is why there's a cupboard full of Easter eggs and her flatmates were sulking; until she offered to share.

Comfort eating; in high school I always wanted to start my own trends, but I was never cool enough so I followed those set by others- even the ugly trends, like mismatching shoelaces or.. I hate to say it, but I even got my lip pierced, and a tattoo.
Ugly doesn't do it justice, but I've grown out of such unthinking compliance now.
No really, I have.
To prove it, I'm quite keen on starting my very own trend, and it's one I think could prove to be quite popular; in theory at least. In practise, I suspect it could lead to unrelenting obesity, societal ostracism and an early death- after having lost several million brain cells and decided it's somehow A Good Idea to go on Trisha and Show The World how you've reached The Stage where you have to be rolled onto the stage.
I love my day time TV, and I'm drawing all this from real life examples.
Is gluttony a sin?

But anyway, after that amazing pep talk, here's what I propose; as the detox was de facto pack trend for January, so will be comfort eating for March and April.

Who's with me?

A Brief History

I have certain indefinable qualms regarding putting objects in my eye- although one could be forgiven for not realising this, based on how often I stab myself in the eye while applying eyeliner.
As a result of this, I'm somewhat leery about using contacts- and as I'm clumsy clumsy clumsy I have this tendency to get through glasses like.. like.. a wayward child(?), although the sad demise of my last pair was not entirely my fault, as such; they were in my bag when the contents of my purse were liberated. I can't imagine what anybody would want with a pair of prescription glasses for the borderline blind, but it means I get to go glasses shopping.
Which I adore- it's better than the thrill I get when underwear shopping, but doesn't quite reach the, occasionally quite literal, dizzying heights of shoe shopping.

My first pair of glasses were, it pains me to say, turquoise. This is a perfect example of why children shouldn't be allowed to go glasses shopping alone, and the turquoise bit on the outer rim began to peel after about two weeks of wear; which meant I spent the next year wearing patchy faux gold and turquoise glasses.
Imaginably, school photographs for that year are not exactly my favourite things ever.
Fortunately though, things could only really improve from there; until the point maybe three years later when I broke a pair (gold, round, like the ones your grandfather wears, but slightly smaller) shortly after having been bought them. Being decidedly charmless, my mother wouldn't buy me another pair, which means I got to spend abut six months wearing glasses, Harry Potter style, patched together with sticky tape.
Except this is a fair few years ago, so I was doing it long before JK Rowling thunk it up.

My new pair are quite cute, as these things go. They're black and really rather thick- none of this rimless, nondescript shennanigans; with these, you can certainly tell I'm wearing them. But they don't make me want to cower in shame, and I feel quite high up in the style stakes. Who knows, maybe I'll even stop wearing contacts when I go out at night.
Glasses, confidence inducing?
Who'd have thunk it.