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I’m always being offered the chance to do things I don’t want to do. ‘Win the chance to design your own jewellery!’ ‘Make your own fashion line!’ ‘Be a star in the newest MTV show!’ Number one, just because you put an exclamation point! at the end of your sentence! doesn’t make it exciting! Number two, WHY would I want to design my own jewellery?! One of the best things about being a grown-up is that I can BUY things I once made. So now, I can eat pasta shells rather than stringing them around my neck. I can go to restaurants, and order real life food, rather than putting those plastic lamb chops and fried egg onto my plate. (The people who make that plastic food are evil geniuses- nothing that is inedible should look so tasty). I mean, obviously I was fed as a child, but dinner parties were far and few between.

My gym is up to this too. ‘Bring a friend and get a free pair of sports socks!’ I don’t want to bring my ‘friend’ to the gym. My ‘friend’ will assume that I think she is fat. It could be irredeemable. It has genuinely gotten to the point that I am afeared when I spot an exclamation point.

The worst culprit, of course, is the supermarket. ‘Buy one get one free!’ Fantastic. Now all I have to eat is 600g of baby spinach, and no space in my fridge for the milk.

There are some things that are sacred to me. One of these is getting dressed in the morning in natural light. I like to start my day by pretending I’m Julie Andrews, finding endless possibilites in the curtains.

Anyway, I’ve moved. And now there are a whole new set of people to wonder at sleepily . (Oh, I also like to perve on people while I’m getting dressed. This is another thing that is sacred to me). Sacre bleu! (Yes, I speak the French. I also like blue cheese, preferably with quince, which is still much too hard to find in London. Interestingly, when I was 12 my favourite colour was purple, which I like to think of as blue’s more sophisticated cousin. Perhaps a secret smoker, though she’ll grow out of this and get into Russian literature. Or at least lugging the books around. And sighing, endlessly. It’s ok though, she turns out great). One of the best things about my new bedroom is the view. One of the worst things is that I still don’t have a wardrobe so am using a cardboard box. My clothes look a lot like I pulled them out of a cardboard box. There are two reasons why my view is excellent. I have named them Mike and Mango. This is mostly because recently I tried to determine a colleague’s middle name from its initial. Which was M. Mike is a black guy who likes to drink coffee over the sink (shirtless), and Mango is a white guy who always forgets where he has put his clothes so paces back and forward (shirtless). I really see a lot of potential for Mike and Mango. They would make a perfect sitcom. I personally would be happy to help them with their syndication rights. I sometimes see Mike and Mango in the evening. (By ‘see’, yes, I mean perve on them from my window). What Mike and Mango have got sorted (which is yet another reason they will soon be the darlings of Channel 4), is the post-work change. This is a crucial part of your day. Personally, I like to start undressing while fumbling for my front door key, so that I’m halfway out of my tights when I bump into my neighbours. I then carefully sling my dress, heels, tights, the occasional belt onto the floor and do some light press ups in my underwear. (By light press ups I mean start searching for trackies/ pajama bottoms around my room. They often end up under my bed, so there’s some pretty intense exercise going on). I used to have several pairs of excellently comfortable tracksuit bottoms but they have been mercilessly retrieved by my disgruntled friend. I’m obviously not going to buy a new pair (I mostly try very hard to avoid paying for things that make me look ugly) but if I were…

1. These are by Jean Paul Gaultier. (Yes, French. Sacre bleu). I won’t include a link, because they’re sold out. Too many people bought these re-imagined Juicy Couture cotton/polyester leg coverers. I hope you’ve noticed that these come with zipped pockets- perhaps because once you’ve bought them, you won’t be able to afford a handbag and will have to carry your stuff in your pockets. I have been wondering about the model’s odd pose, but think perhaps these trackies are so tight that she needs to stand like this to relieve pressure around the bottom area.

2. These are my favourite things in the world. They are made by Rag & Bone, and they cost $242. I am excellent at keeping up with the Forex, so I can tell you with some certainty that in real money that is £42. Please buy several pairs. They are called ‘summer longjohns’. I cannot possibly imagine what I have been doing without longjohns all these summers.  http://www.ssense.com/men/product/rag_and_bone/summer_long_johns/23350

3. These look a lot like something one might buy at The Gap. (To the unfashionable, obviously. Not to me). Well, stop looking in The Gap immediately, because these trackies are made by Bottega Veneta. They cost £515. They are made of cotton. They have a drawstring waist. (Once again, get out of The Gap. These tracksuit bottoms are entirely different. They have ribbed hems). http://www.mrporter.com/product/300424

PS. Trackies are not to be worn outside unless one is playing sports. Or homeless. Honestly, this is not a suggestion. I wore a pair yesterday to Tesco and a tramp stopped me on Holland Park Avenue to ask if I were okay. Well, I think that was what he was asking. It was hard to hear over my immense comfort.

There’s something going on in my office. Luckily, I am too deep into the ‘Glee’ OST to worry about it. I am also mostly on the Kensington & Chelsea website, trying to find out if Federer is now offering cheap tennis coaching in Holland Park. This would be extremely handy for me. I’m a little lost, to be honest. Kensington & Chelsea have made me undergo a series of tests on their website. First, I worked out that although I would indeed like to be ‘Active for Life’, I could not currently participate in this program as I was a) not made of play-dough (all the images had play-dough people lifting balls and smiling), and b) not wildly obese (yet. If I don’t work out how to get my Federer tennis lessons I soon might be). So, first hurdle overcome, I kept on searching.I next found myself in the ‘Young People’ section, only to be told I was too old. Too old?! Well, my tear glands are certainly getting a workout. Anyway, I’m still hopelessly lost. Luckily, I’m keeping my cool. Now some people, when faced with these obstacles, would become dreadfully upset. They might believe that Kensington & Chelsea (voted skinniest borough in London for the last 5 years) was deliberately obstructing their path to tennis glory. I know better. Federer has clearly set up a ‘Goblet of Fire’ style competition to determine his rightful heir. As the new owner of  a pair of white knickers large enough to stuff tennis balls into, I am certainly it. (I am not actually sure how I came to own these knickers. I fear my cleaner has been doing her own laundry in my machine. I might have to write to Mrs Mills).  I hope that everyone has noticed, knickers aside, how calmly I have dealt with this situation. This is because I have not resorted to what psychologists call ‘catastrophizing’. This is an excellent concept. I will explain it*:

Imagine you wake up in the morning, and you can’t fit into your jeans. Now immediately, you will have several thoughts. Some people (you) will think ‘oh golly. I am terribly fat.’ This is unhelpful (now you’re silly and fat). Other people (me) will think ‘how funny. My jeans have shrunk.’ This is helpful (now I’m still slim and I have magic jeans. My day’s started excellently). So you see, while people who don’t understand catastrophizing** would now be looking at a tennis-less Summer, I am about to embark on a magical Summer of free tennis coaching with the man who has held on to the no.1 position for the longest time (in consecutive weeks). I will have to ask Rafa how to correctly tie my bandana.

*Feel free to follow all of my psychological advice. I’m pretty much a qualified therapist. And a doctor.

**There’s an app for that- http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/thought-diary-pro/id387173290?mt=8#. Made by the nice people at happtic.

I cry on planes. I sleep, and when I wake up, I cry. Not in a delicate, teary-eyed kindof way. I sob. I sob, and my face is all red and blotchy, and all the little veins in my eyes turn red, and I look dreadful. I don’t look like someone who has just seen a beautiful sunset out of her window and shed a few tears because she’s just so moved. I look like someone who’s run out of tissues and is wiping snot across their face with the back of their hand. I flew to Havana a few years ago with a great friend. Like most of my close friends, this woman is smart, funny and compassionate. She also threatened to move seats if I didn’t stop crying so ostentatiously. (matters were not improved when I exited the plane gaily exclaiming “beunos aires” to all the air stewardesses. My Spanish leaves something to be desired). I try to warn people before we fly. “Look, I know you’ve come to associate me with a certain level of sang-froid, a certain effortless cool. The thing is, I cry on planes.” No-one ever listens. I mean, they have to when it’s quiet, and they’ve turned all the cabin lights off and everyone else is asleep. But by then it’s too late. There’s no escape. (I know this, because I’ve seen their eyes search frantically for an escape route. I’m crying. I’m not blind). My family, hardened by years of dealing with my little foibles (or as they delicately put it- her unbelievable weirdness), ignore me. My little sister once told a concerned air-steward I was crying because I had forgotten how to speak English. She then ordered me the most horrible of the in-flight meals.
I have spent some time trying to isolate what it is that makes me cry. It’s not the overhead strip lighting, because I’ve never cried in a nightclub toilet. (Well, maybe once, but that was because I’d lost one of my fake eyelashes and my lopsided reflection scared me). It’s not the movement, because I don’t cry in other forms of transport (A coupla times in a late-night taxi when I thought my house had moved without telling me). All I have managed to do is try to mitigate my condition:

1. I do not watch the movies. Any of them. On the aforementioned flight to Havana I sobbed loudly for 35mins because the chap in ‘Goal 3’ misses a call from his girlfriend.

2. I always take tissues. Strangely, tissues elicit a disapproving beep from those airport detectors. I have no idea why, but I’m always having to pull wads of tissues out of my pockets. It would probably be less embarrassing to pull out some anthrax.

3. I try to sit next to the window. That way, I can pretend I’m just deeply affected by the beautiful sunset.

1. I am disappointed with the Summer tv schedule. I would like to see a tv show where you try to knock toddlers down by throwing beach balls at them. It could be called Tip the Toddler.

2. Deciphering those ‘Captcha’ things (where you have to prove you’re not a robot by writing oddly put together letters) has become dreadfully difficult. I would prefer if you had to complete a well-known quote. Different sites could have varying quote difficulty levels to attract only worthy visitors. So, for PerezHilton.com, you’d be shown: I’m addicted want to jam inside your ………’, and for The New York Times you’d get: ‘Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low/ An excellent thing in a ……..’.

3. Sometimes at the gym I see women walking around whose bodies look like those in the adverts. I would like these people to be placed in a separate changing area. Separate but Equal. Except obviously ours would have to be bigger, and better equipped. Because there would be more of us. And we eat more.

In other news, I’m annoyed at the parcity of relevant ‘yo mama’ jokes. It would be absurd for me to say to my friends, “yo mama’s so ugly when I took her to the zoo, they said, ‘thanks for bringing her back'”. It would be far more cutting if I said, ‘yo mama’s so stupid she got her botox before a chemical peel.’ Or, “yo mama’s so uncouth she addressed Princess Anne as ‘Your Majesty’.”

My key take-away from Tina Fey’s excellent book, ‘Bossypants’, is that of all the poses to strike on a magazine cover, the thumb casually hooked into the knickers is the worst.  I am terribly pleased that I know this, obviously, because I need to be prepared for the future. (In the future I will probably be far too busy to write this blog as I will be negotiating with ‘Maxim’ over poses). I really like the future. The future is where I will once again fit into the jeans I last wore when I was 16. (Obviously they are currently folded neatly with my other jeans. Just waiting). I will start getting up an hour before work just to run in the park. I will learn how to blow-dry my hair exactly as they do at the hairdressers. I will finish Proust. I will drink less, but be just as fun. I will accidentally make an absurd amount of money, but it won’t change anything. (Except I will increase my donations to charity. And drink better vodka). The future is magnificent because in it I’ll get to be a much more succesful version of myself. And pose tastefully for ‘Maxim’. I can’t wait. But, crucially, I AM. I would be very pleased if other people could politely follow my example.In  the FUTURE, it is absolutely fine to be a doctor, have glossy hair, get a promotion, run the marathon eye-wateringly fast (you all know who you are). In the future, these things are completely acceptable and welcome (I don’t want any ugly jealousy marring my ‘Maxim’ moment). IN THE FUTURE.

P.S. Congratulations to this Summer’s newly qualified doctors, I imagine from now on your lives will be exactly like Grey’s Anatomy.