December 7, 2012 · 10:51 am

Please call me back

I called my Grandparents last week. They weren’t in, so I left them a little voicemail. ‘Hello!’ I began cheerily. ‘It is me, the favourite. I am calling just to chat. Feel free to call me back, if you would like to chat to me. I know you are probably desperate to hear from me.’ I hung up feeling terribly virtuous, and continued to potter about, doing the myriad of vitally important things which make up my day.

The next day, my Grandparents still had not returned my call. To understand the significance of this, let me quickly tell you a few things about my Grandparents:

1. My Grandfather is ex-RAF. We get to the airport, even for flights to Manchester, 4 hours before departure. Quite simply, my Grandfather is the most organized man you will ever meet. I can tell you already where we are holidaying as a family in 2015. My Grandfather would never ever forget to return a phone call.
2. My Grandparents are retired. Yet my Grandfather gets up, unfailingly, at 6.30am. He has endless amounts of time to return my phone calls.
3. My Grandmother likes to ‘subtly’ boast to the other Grandmothers about her grandchildren. Here is an example of my Grandmother’s subtleness: ‘Hello! Yes, I would like some milk for my tea please. Did I tell you one of my grandchildren is a doctor? Yes, it is impressive. No sugar, thanks.’ The possibility of getting more gloating fodder from our phone call would be impossible for my Grandmother to resist.

It is now a week after the fact, and my Grandparents still have not returned my phone call. Assuming the worst, I went to talk to my little sister about this.

‘The grandparents haven’t returned my call,’ I began. ‘I don’t want to tempt fate, but do you think they don’t like me any more?’ My little sister looked at me for a second, musing on the gravity of the situation. ‘I spoke to Grandpa yesterday,’ She informed me smugly. ‘I think they don’t like you anymore.’

I returned to my desk to begin firing off a suitably wheedling and passive-aggressive email to my Grandparents. Typing in their email address I noticed an unread email from them: ‘Lucy! We are off gallivanting and spending all your inheritance! Thanks for the call, absolutely no time whatsoever to return it. Much Love.’

In unrelated news, I am currently looking for someone who is available in the middle of the day for meandering, pointless conversations. If they could think everything I do and say is quite marvelous, that would also be very much appreciated.

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November 29, 2012 · 12:03 pm

Why do you smell of Cif?

At university I tried terribly hard to be frugal. Unfortunately, I am incoherently foolish with money, so would spend all my term’s allowance on a fur-lined après-ski coat, and later find myself wandering forlornly about Tescos, wondering why everything cost so much money.

I decided to ‘save money’ by turning my back on the over-indulgent fripperies of ‘named beauty products’ or ‘shampoos made for humans’, and instead proudly spent 56p on a blue viscous liquid which purported to be an ‘all-purpose washer’.

‘Look,’ I said happily, brandishing my vat of clean. ‘And you probably thought girls squandered all their money on fancy beauty regimes.’ My male housemates looked at me in alarm, and one of them slowly reached under our kitchen sink, to pull out a ominously similar-looking blue viscous liquid.

Naturally, I refused to let their bourgeois conceptions of ‘what is fit for humans’ deter me, and spent at least a week screamingly itchy, washing myself with what seemed to be re-packaged oven cleaner.

All grown-up now, yesterday I dragged my friend to Boots. ‘I want something that says, ‘Wake up!’ but in a calm and soothing way,’ I told her, scanning the shower gels. My friend looked bewildered, and suggested a Radox gel. ‘Oh no,’ I told her kindly. ‘I can’t use Radox products. They have odd openings on their bottles. It confuses me terribly.’

I was close to giving up when I spotted that they were selling Original Source shower gels for £1. ‘Perfect,’ I said to my friend, picking up a luridly yellow bottle. ‘It is great being a grown-up.’

My housemate asked me yesterday why I smelled so strongly of Cif, but seeing as that’s a brand-named household product, I’m taking it to mean that I am pretty much a designer-infused grown-up dream.

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November 26, 2012 · 11:11 am

Please let me stay

I had a dream last night that I was asked to justify my position in the house. Only the house wasn’t the Big Brother house, or even the Playboy Mansion. No, my vivid and over-active imagination (so important in a writer) had recreated, to the minutest detail, my actual, real-life flat.

I was sat, in my actual, real-life living room, in front of my 2 housemates. One of whom had a pad of paper, the other of whom (my little sister) had forgotten to bring one. ‘So,’ My housemate began. ‘Tell us why we should let you stay.’ Luckily, dream-Lucy was eloquent and witty, self-effacing and poignant*. She was allowed to stay.

I woke up this morning still thinking about this. Here are some of the reasons I am the world’s best housemate**

1. I will always tell you that you look fat.

Not just randomly, when you are dashing out of the door for a job interview or something, but if you ask me, I will always answer honestly. I will not say, ‘I don’t love those jeans’, which will leave you confused and belittle my own impeccable fashion sense. I will say, ‘Those jeans make you look fat, which you are not, so please change.’

2. I have perfected the seamless ‘knock and open’ door move, so you will not have to waste any time telling me to ‘come in’.

3. I do not condition or blow-dry my hair, so our water and electricity bills will be nice and low.

4. Often for dinner I simply make a vast cauldron of popcorn.

I am more than happy to make an extra portion for you. (I do not wish to share, so please do not stick your grubby hand into my popcorn).

5. I have hundreds of book recommendations.

If I particularly like a book I have just read, I will deliver it to you in your room. I will then watch you closely until you read it. If you do not seem keen to read it (say, because you are off to work, or in the middle of reading another book), I will helpfully follow you around the flat, reading choice excerpts from the book.

*Look, it was my dream, OK?

**Entirely and fully self-awarded, with absolutely no regard or recourse to fact or the opinions of anyone else.

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November 20, 2012 · 12:16 pm

Come Fly with Me

Like all normal people, I get much of my daily advice from celebrities. Victoria Beckham, for instance, encourages one not to eat when flying, in case of bloating. Like Posh, I also fly a lot. It’s almost exclusively with Ryanair, but I have taken Victoria’s words to heart, and am now, in a fit of jet-lagged induced generosity, going to share my own travel tips:

1. Eat as much as humanly possible before you get onto the flight. Always. You never know how long you’re going to be taxiing or what kind of slop they are going to feed you on the plane. Also, if you crash in a remote location, I feel it is going to make you look elegant and self-sacrificing if you are not the first to eagerly dig into the dead.

2. Bring snacks. Flying is mind-numbingly boring, and snacks serve both to occupy you and allow you to make a new ‘in-flight friend’, if you are generous to share them. (If you are sitting next to Victoria Beckham, do not be disappointed if she refuses your kind offer of Fruit-Tella, and simply ask if you can have her bread roll instead). Also, these VB-spurned sweets could play an important role in any crash-scenario.

3. Glare menacingly at your fellow passengers when you initially sit down. Now is not the time to be smiling sweetly and offering out slightly squashed Salt and Vinegar Walkers. Play the long game. Cultivate an aura of forbidding sternness. You may, if you wish, relent slightly if sat next to an extremely attractive person, or a small child. But if it all goes wrong, don’t come crying to me. I have successfully convinced at least 4 flight attendants that I do not speak English.

4. Treat the flight attendants in precisely the same manner as you would a kidnapper. The goal is to stay alive, and be as inconspicuous as possible. Any attention is unwelcome attention. Trust me, when they’re looking for people to give the spare diet cokes to, they will not be rushing up to the over-chatty extra-blanket demanding chap in aisle 4. The quietly enigmatic possibly deaf foreigner is already enjoying their ice-cold beverage before Mr aisle 4 has managed to explain to the poor flight attendant that he simply cannot work out where to plug his headphones in.

5. Bring moisturizer. This, I admit, is a tip I have stolen from Victoria Beckham. But while she encourages mid-flight moisturizing to ensure the best possible airport arrival photo, I think it is handy to have a little bottle of something one can ‘accidentally’ smear on the shared arm-rest, in the case of an arm-rest hog.

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November 12, 2012 · 11:11 am

Blinded by the smell

I’m buying a new perfume. This, along with choosing a new pair of glasses, is one of my most-hated tasks.

While we spend most of our lives ignoring the constant siren song of marketers, desperate to sell us, well, anything (I am not ashamed to admit a slight ‘scene’ when WH Smith tried to sell me bottled tap water. ‘This is the end of days,’ I cried appropriately. ‘There is no more room for satire. We are beyond parody.’), there are two notable exceptions. Glasses and perfume.

It is, frankly, near impossible to buy perfume or glasses for oneself. Let me explain. Unless you are Taylor Swift, you buy glasses to help you see better. You walk into the opticians, and they give you a prescription. At this point, you are wearing your own, current glasses. All is well with the world, and the helpful glasses shop assistant shepherds you towards the glasses display. ‘This is great,’ You think happily. ‘I have to spend money. This is a necessary purchase. Only these frames look awesome! This is a fun and necessary purchase!’

Only it’s not fun. It’s not fun at all. Because in order to see what the bloody things look like on, you have to take your own glasses off. At which point you can no longer see anything.


So instead of glamourously trying on beautiful and stylish glasses frames, while the shop assistants look on admiringly, you end up with your face squished against the mirror, trying to squint for long enough to see what these new frames look like. It is not a coincidence that people end up getting the same style of glasses again and again. Buying the damn things is an exercise in public embarrassment and frustration. After trying on more than 3 frames, bumping your nose against the impossibly small mirror provided, and generally feeling quite terribly vulnerable because of your recently acquired blindness, I firmly believe that people just buy the pair of frames they happen to be holding in their hands at that moment. Certainly, after seeing some of the choices people have made, I can reach no other conclusion.

Perfume is the same- after trying one spray, you can no longer smell anything.

It is highly likely that I will have to continue my life as is- smelling of washing powder and proudly wearing my current glasses- which are simply the closest approximation I could find to the most delightful frames I have ever owned- my very first pair, a huge, face-enveloping pair of orange lenses.

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November 9, 2012 · 11:49 am

Loveballs

Due to the popularity of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, the sales of ‘loveballs’ (properly known as Ben Wa balls) has skyrocketed. Luckily, as a bright young thing with her fingers firmly on the pulse, I am totally aware of what Ben Wa balls are*.

As far as I can work out, Ben Wa balls are variously-sized, weighted balls which are inserted into the front bottom. This, according to Wikipedia has two benefits- it strengthens the vagina, which reduces incontinence and increases your propensity to orgasm. These, admittedly, are very nice benefits, but, personally, I think Wikipedia might have undersold these love balls. Only two benefits? From walking about with balls inside you all day long? Just off the top of my head I can think of many, many more:

1. Excessive weight loss due to day-long panicky sweating about said balls falling out of your front bottom.

2. Heightened awareness of sound, due to constant fear of balls clinking inside yourself and the subsequent horror of having to explain why your vagina is making clinking sounds. ‘Oh that? No, don’t fuss about that. I have simply inserted some metal balls into myself. Please enjoy the delicious pasta I have made.’

3. Wikipedia ends its entry on Ben Wa balls with a thrilling fact: the world champion for vagina strength can lift 35lbs. Great! Because what women all over the world need most is for another body part to be held up to an impossible ideal.

I could go on, but the effort of clenching my legs together while writing this has started to take its toll. ‘50 Shades of Grey’, for your continued and unrelenting ability to make women’s lives that little bit more difficult, I salute you. (Though from my chair, I’m scared to stand up).

*Understand how to use Google*

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November 7, 2012 · 11:21 am

Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

I live with my little sister by choice, because she is my always friend. For a long time, I genuinely believed that the sole reason for my little sister’s existence was to be a companion to myself. It came as somewhat of a shock to hear that my parents had actually wanted another child. Until I realised that if your first baby is as awesome as me, naturally you would continue to procreate.

It is, for the most part, fantastic living with your always friend. My little sister is the funniest person I have ever met, buys super expensive Waitrose food, and has the most enormous DVD collection I have ever seen.

This week, however, has been slightly different. It started, as most weeks do, on Monday. ‘Lucy,’ My little sister began carefully. ‘Do you have a sleeping bag?’ I looked at her oddly. ‘No,’ I replied, climbing into my freshly made bed. ‘Sleep well.’ 30 minutes later, as I was drifting off to sleep, playing one of my favourite in-my-head games, where I am perfectly and aptly delivering all the zinging one-liners I failed to think of in time in real life, my little sister thundered her way into my bedroom.

‘I’m sleeping here,’ She announced, clambering into bed next to me just as I was telling my Year 1 art teacher why my Mother’s Day gift was ‘too good for her bourgeois conceptions of art’. She then proceeded to hop in and out of bed for the next 20 mins, each journey accompanied by a turning on of the overhead light, collecting her phone, endless glasses of water, and another pillow. It was, to the best of my imaginings, exactly like sharing a bed with Margaret Thatcher.*

My little sister wakes up early, and so was long gone by the time I blearily made my way to the shower. Washing vigorously to try to remove some of the gritty trauma of the night before (my little sister sleeps so stilly that I had to check several times in the night that she was still alive), I hopped out of the shower and into the welcoming embrace of no towel. Because my little sister has seemingly developed late-onset colour-blindness, and can no longer tell the difference between blue (my towel) and green (her, certainly unwashed and rather ratty-looking towel).

As I tried to tell my Mother later that day, sometimes, it’s better to realise that, Guy-Ritchie like, your first creation is just the best thing you’re ever going to make.

*Margaret Thatcher famously only slept 4 hours a night. This is usually held up as an admirable trait, but I now think we should all spend a few moments thinking about poor Denis.*

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November 6, 2012 · 11:52 am

Vote, and stop hating Santa

4 years ago, I stayed up until we knew that Obama had won. It was awesome.

Tonight, I am old. I will be going to bed by 11pm, (or 10pm, if I’m particularly lucky), so must take this, my very last opportunity, to tell everyone that they must vote.

I care who runs America in the same way that I care about protecting the myth of Santa for under 5-year olds. It is tremendously important, but has very little impact on my actual, day-to-day life. Yet, having been not-at-all-sheltered by my own parents, who loudly fought for the right to ‘go to bed’ and ‘not be bloody Santa’, I feel vehemently that this is something that needs to be protected.

So, if you can, vote. Or else you hate Santa.

*And obviously everyone must vote for whoever they so desire. Although I heard that Romney hates Santa.*

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November 5, 2012 · 12:46 pm

Stop complaining

My little sister thinks that I don’t voluntarily spend enough time with her, so she began an extremely effective campaign to change this. Her weapons of choice were a precise blend of whinging and sighing, and my own defences (slamming the door to my bedroom and humming so that I couldn’t hear her) were quickly eroded.

‘Fine,’ I said, exasperated. ‘I’ll hang out with you on Thursday. But I’m choosing the activity.’ Driven to near madness (have you ever tried to hum loud enough so that you can’t hear another person talking? It’s near impossible), I plumped for a spa.

I love spas. I like the warmth, the odd music, the treatments. I like the hushed tones of the deferential staff, the absurd quality of the towels they envelop you in, the decadence of the whole occasion. The one thing I do not like, and if anyone now mentions the ‘cucumber-flavoured water’ they are being written onto my very own ‘naughty list’ in indelible ink- is the lack of proper refreshments.

There is, and I have thought about this carefully, not a single activity that cannot be improved with the addition of food. Which is why I now have a new favourite London spa: the Sanook Spa, at the Hilton Courthouse Doubletree in Covent Garden.

Not only is the spa itself everything you would want it to be- I had a memorably excellent full-body massage, and returned to a level of dazed happiness not even my little sister could ruin, but before you enter it you can eat a full high-tea in their lovely restaurant. It is, without exception, the perfect meeting of body and mind. In that your body reaches levels of pleasure that allows your pesky, over-thinking mind to simply shut up and go away. Which, ironically, is the perfect solution to my infuriating little sister. Though perhaps I sent somewhat of a mixed message when I rewarded her campaign of world-class aggravation with a trip to the most indulgent afternoon spa in London.

http://www.virginexperiencedays.co.uk/pure-heaven-for-two-at-sanook-spa?path=q-sanook%2520spa

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November 1, 2012 · 10:57 am

JUST EAT

I grew up in a house where my mother made her own mayonnaise, and when we pleaded for hamburgers she marched down to The Ginger Pig (http://www.thegingerpig.co.uk/) and convinced them to grind their rib-eye steak into patties for us. For all of her children, nothing seems more enticing, illicit and glamorous than take-away.

The trouble with take-away is that it’s somewhat of a gamble. Luckily, someone else has obviously become sick of the anxiety-producing wait after ordering, the ambivalent tipping of the delivery person when you’re still unsure of what they have brought you, the rising anticipation whilst the food is unwrapped and peered at, the ultimate moment of truth as you finally get to eat the damn food- and created https://www.just-eat.co.uk/.

I have done ‘extensive research’ on the Just-Eat site (no, honestly. We ordered so much they called to security check us, because it was ‘an unusually large order’. I took this as a great, and noble achievement, while my flatmate started looking up other areas we could move to), and I truly am unsure what I ever did before such a website existed.

For a start, it has put an end to those awful, protracted telephone conversations, where they desperately try to hear what you’re saying, while you field late-addition yells from your end. ‘So just one order of egg fried rice?’ The poor chap on the other end tries to confirm. ‘Lucy! Make sure to get those dumplings. Not the bad dumplings. The good ones. No wait. 2 portions.’ ‘Sorry?’ The chap queries, nervously. ‘Two portions?’

It has allowed decisions to be made properly, and democratically, without ever needing to speak to a real-life human being. Which, surely, is one of the great perks of take-away- that no-one needs to engage with ‘actual people’. Anything that allows me to get what I want without speaking is A-OK in my books- and, thanks to the internet’s unique ability to bring out the very worst in its anonymous contributors, the comments on https://www.just-eat.co.uk/ can very much be relied upon. Now it just remains for me to invite my Mother over, and pass off the take-away as my own…

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