December 17, 2013 · 10:35 am

The worst things about Christmas

Here are the worst things about Christmas:

1. Complete strangers wishing you Merry Christmas. Yesterday I was exhorted to have a Happy Christmas 4 times by people I just happened to be alive near to. In October, I sneezed violently 4 times on a crowded tube. Not a single person blessed me. People really need to get their priorities in order.

2. Christmas jumpers. Which are currently about as ‘ironic’ as Cliff Richard’s ‘Miseltoe and Wine’.*

3. Magazine gift guides. I very much do not want my family to realize that there are present possibilities other than a very well-written personalized poem:

Mum it’s Christmas
We’re all coming over
You try to hoover while we’re sitting down
And won’t let us eat on the sofa.

Equally, I feel very uncomfortable telling my Mother that she ‘has it all’, when I know for certain that I have been quietly helping myself to household items such as toilet paper and truffle oil for years. This is an excellent, financially-responsible thing to do, although be careful to hide ill-gotten gains when your parents visit your flat. It is almost impossible to bluff away owning the identical hand-stitched cashmere sofa throw they got 20 years ago in Florence. ‘No, no Mum,’ I ended up explaining. ‘Zara Home has really improved the quality of their fabrics these days.’
4. The bizarre and inexplicable licentiousness that people feel Christmas affords them. ‘Aw, go on,’ they say, fisting all of my saved-up chocolate biscuits into their faces. ‘It’s Christmas.’ I can’t wait to return the favour. ‘Oh, don’t mind if I do,’ I’ll say, quaffing champagne they haven’t offered but that I’ve ‘noticed’ tucked away behind their PG tips. ‘After all, it’s the harvest festival.’

*Cliff Richard’s wall calendar, of course, remains as the number 1 gift to give everyone you know.

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Aside

Don’t come as a sexy cat

My Mother is having a Christmas party. ‘It’s Russian themed,’ I told my +1. ‘Don’t come as a sexy cat.’ 

There are some things one shouldn’t have to tell other people. Unfortunately, it seems that other people don’t realise this. While I waited for my friend to decide on their outfit, I made this helpful guide to things you really should already know.

1. It is not appropriate to attend any party, Halloween parties included, as a sexy cat.

Sexy cat is the costume choice of the ill-informed and unimaginative. It is the lowest common denominator of costumes. It would be simpler to draw a fraction on your face, circle the denominator and go to the party like that. 

2. No matter how engrossing and interesting your conversation is, when a person is on the loo, do not continue talking to them. Only two words ever need to be said to someone who is on the loo. These are: ‘Toilet paper?’

3. When you enter someone’s home for the first time, you need to say something. Preferably something positive, but if that’s not possible, an enthusiastic statement of fact is useful: ‘You have a kitchen!’ or ‘Carpet!’. Do not, as my new cleaner did, scrumple up your face into a picture of dismay, and say nothing. It is deeply insulting. Particularly as I was asking her what she thought of my new coat.

4. Compliment people on their new coats.

I would have written a 5th point, but at this point my friend got back to me. ‘Oh, no problem,’ ‘Russian themed?’ my friend replied cheerfully. ‘I’ll come as a sexy bear.’ 

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November 25, 2013 · 12:31 pm
Aside

Priorities

We are trying to find a dinner date. Emails are flying back and forth as people suggest dates and people (not always other people- some of us are not really on top of our diaries) reject them. We are trying to find a dinner date because our dinner last week fell apart because I was dying.*

‘This is ridiculous,’ I said to my colleague. ‘It is simply impossible that 4 people can’t find a time to have dinner together before January. No one’s that busy.’ My colleague nodded and mumbled something incoherent about ‘having to work’, but I bumped into him later and had a more in-depth conversation.

We were in the men’s toilet.

‘What are you doing here?’ He yelled when he saw me. ‘This is the men’s toilet.’ ‘Yes,’ I replied calmly, nudging him to the left. ‘Someone has jammed the cold tap in the ladies, so I’ve come here to wash my hands. Regular hand washing drastically reduces your risk of illness. Have I told you about my recent brush with death?’

My colleague was silent, so I continued our earlier conversation. ‘I wonder which of my friends isn’t prioritising our dinner?’ I asked him thoughtfully, leaning over him to grab a paper towel.

My colleague had left by this time, noticeably without washing his hands (apparently he ‘no longer wanted to wee’ once he had the pleasant surprise of me joining him in the toilet), so I began composing a sternly worded email to my friends. I touched on love, loss and the importance of prioritising eating with me over eating with other people. Suddenly, an email popped into my inbox. ‘What about next Monday?’ A flurry of acceptances followed. I checked my diary with growing alarm. ‘I can’t go,’ I wailed to my colleague.’It is absolutely awful how busy we are these days.’ He stared at me for a moment. ‘Well,’ He said slowly. ‘Some of us are.’

 

 

*A future blog post on my brave and self-sacrificing battle with certain death will be published soon. 

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November 12, 2013 · 12:50 pm
October 31, 2013 · 12:37 pm

How to be rich

I wanted my little sister to pay half of some flat improvements. ‘It seems awfully expensive,’ She said. ‘I’ve just spent more money than that on a winter coat,’ I pointed out. My little sister looked at me in horror. ‘Why?’ She asked. ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ I replied. ‘I think I got confused and thought I was rich.’ 

I am not rich, so my little sister suggested that I might return the coat. Unfortunately, I threw out the coat receipt during my frantic weekly bid to tidy everything before the cleaner arrives. ‘It will be fine,’ I told my sister reassuringly. ‘I’ll make savings elsewhere.’ It is surprisingly easy to save money. Here are some tips:

1. Stop buying food. You will be astonished at how much food there will still be in your flat. A week of tomato puree, long-forgotten weetabix and never-touched ryvita is precisely the kind of pre-Christmas diet magazines everywhere are sure to be suggesting.

2. Cancel your gym membership. It’s dark, it’s cold and most of the time it’s raining. The most attractive thing about you at the moment is your ability to provide body heat. Any weight-loss should therefore be seen as a negative. 

3. Cultivate an aura of richness by only carrying a single £50 note and your oyster card. Nothing says international jet-setter better than this.

4. Turn every item in your house into a multi-purpose item. Your friends cannot fail to be impressed when you encourage them to wash their hands with washing-up liquid, or offer loo-roll as napkins. ‘I’m big into recycling,’ You can tell them, as you feed them ryvita bought by the previous tenant.

5. Turn off the heating. After all, you have an eye-wateringly expensive coat to keep you warm. 

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Aside

‘Do you think we’re getting old?’ I asked my friend recently. ‘A bit,’ She replied thoughtfully. ‘It’s not good, is it?’ I said. ‘I think we may be falling behind.’ My friend stared at me in confusion. ‘Well,’ I explained helpfully. ‘I saw the Katy Perry movie.’ The Katy Perry movie, whose title I have forgotten entirely, but whose scenes flash before my eyes daily, is one of the most engrossing and thought-provoking things I have ever seen.

It’s about Katy Perry, who is an extremely famous singer, and was filmed while she was on her very first world tour. 

At its worst, the Katy Perry movie is an ear-assaulting manifesto on Katy’s continued ‘love for her fans’ and ‘ability to hug unwell children’. At its best, it is an astonishingly complex narrative on the choices we make, the consequences of our decisions, and the curious powerlessness that comes alongside the power of celebrity.

We see Katy weeping as she is woken up before a ‘meet-and-greet’, begging her handlers for ‘5 more minutes’ in a way that recalled being forced to go to school so strongly that I later dreamt I was in assembly. We wait as the voice over tells us breathily ‘Katy loves to have a good time’, only for the camera to follow her to a theme park with her sister. (And, I am sure, various members of her entourage- though perhaps they did not sign their releases, as they are rarely featured). 

Apart from all the on-stage showing off, Katy’s life seems to be equally divided between sleeping, getting to work and making small talk with strangers.

‘Ah,’ I said happily to my friend. ‘It’s OK. We’re right on track. We have pretty much the same lives as a world famous multimillionaire.’ ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ My friend replied. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We should do much more showing off.’

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October 30, 2013 · 12:11 pm
October 22, 2013 · 11:23 am

Breakfast is pointless

I don’t really see the point of breakfast.
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Looking at it from science, my go-to looking-companion in moments like these, it makes no sense whatsoever. Yes, you haven’t eaten since dinner. If you had spent the following time walking about, or pretending to be working, or fighting off imaginary attackers, as in a recent gym class I went to completely accidentally (I was looking for what I had been told was an extremely relaxing and effort-free yoga class, but wasn’t concentrating), then feeding oneself would be a real and pressing issue. But in the interim all you have done is sleep. You have eaten food, and then gone to sleep. The occasional loo trip aside, sleeping doesn’t require a great deal of energy. If you were waking up at the crack of dawn to perform a full day’s worth of manual labour, breakfast might have some purpose. But many more of you are eating breakfast than even the most generous estimate of existing 1830’s tithe farmers.
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The perilous existentialism of breakfast aside, I’m not very good at it. The only breakfast food I like, really, is that made by someone else. Otherwise breakfast seems to me to be the most mealy-mouthed and sullen of meals- every bite taken being a stolen moment of being blissfully asleep. My former flatmate was terrific at breakfast. I used to gaze at her enviously in the morning, peacefully eating her porridge whilst catching up on all the celebrity gossip she had missed whilst asleep. (You have no idea the sheer quantity of newsworthy things famous people are able to get up to whilst the rest of us are asleep. It’s almost as if they don’t have to get up in the morning). For her, breakfast was a tranquil preamble to the rest of her day. For me, it’s a time-consuming irritant which once nearly set my kitchen on fire.

‘There is absolutely no point to breakfast,’ I told my colleague crossly this morning. ‘Of course not,’ He replied. ‘Is that why you’re eating your lunch at 9.45am?’

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October 21, 2013 · 11:43 am

Rules for eating

‘We should try this new restaurant,’ My friend suggested innocently. ‘Perhaps we could invite a few other people and pop along next weekend.’ ‘We could,’ I replied dubiously. ‘Or we could do this.’ And I sent her an email with the newly minted charter of the recently incorporated supper club. ‘OK,’ She replied, slightly confused. ‘Well, let’s pick a date and invite some fun people.’ ‘We need rules,’ I replied. ‘A set of rules, and expectations and guidelines for behaviour.’  My friend didn’t respond, so I wrote up the club rules myself:

1. Shared bills only. There is to be no fighting over who drank what/ didn’t have a starter. Take your chances or don’t come.
 
2. We tip. 
 
3. Arrive on time or we’ll start without you. No one person is important enough for us to lose our table.
 
My friend still hasn’t replied, which I assume means she is adding a series of vital sub-clauses and punitive measures to our club charter.  There’s really nothing better than organised fun. I can only imagine how exciting the invite-process is sure to be. ‘We must have a proper system for inviting people,’ I emailed my friend. ‘In case we are overwhelmed.’ ‘I’m really not sure that’s going to be a problem,’ She replied. She’s right, of course. I’ve already started the spreadsheet. 

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Aside

Sleeping around

‘I think there’s something wrong with my sister,’ I said to our flatmate yesterday. ‘Why?’ He asked. ‘She’s always asleep,’ I replied matter-of-factly. ‘Perhaps she has one of those terrible tropical diseases. That would be awful. Think of all the attention she’d get, and all the time we’d have to spend moping about her hospital bed.’ My flatmate stared at me. ‘You’re right,’ I continued thoughtfully. ‘I could turn her bedroom into a walk-in wardrobe.’

My little sister is working nights (read into this as freely as you wish. I regularly inform her that she won’t make any money if she continues to leave wearing medical scrubs). ‘Show a little skin,’ I yelled at her out of our kitchen window as she crossed the road. She ignored me, but an elderly gentleman looked up at me approvingly. My little sister is working nights, which means that we don’t see each other very much, despite living in the same flat.

This is because she spends all her time sleeping. You would not imagine how inconvenient this is. Although she sleeps in a single room, her sleeping presence permeates the flat. ‘Evening,’ Our flatmate whispered to me as I walked in the door last night. ‘Evening,’ I replied in my normal dulcet tones. ‘Ssh,’ He replied. ‘She’s asleep.’

‘She’ is the reason we can’t talk in our normal voices in our own flat. ‘She’ is the person who disturbs me when I walk blearily to do my 5am wee, startling me with her cheery clothed awakeness. ‘What are you doing?’ She asked me yesterday. ‘Sleeping,’ I replied. I would have assumed given her own behaviour that she would have been less dismissive of this. ‘She’ has also started leaving little gifts outside my door, left, I am certain, with the best of intentions, but which are in reality tiny lethal death traps. ‘Aaagh,’ I shouted this morning, falling over a plate of sweets just outside my door. ‘Ssh,’ My flatmate hissed. ‘She’s asleep.’

Whether she has a tropical disease or not, it’s looking increasingly likely that my little sister will be spending some time in the hospital.

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October 10, 2013 · 11:13 am
October 3, 2013 · 12:09 pm

From me to you

One of my closest friends is off to Africa for a year, so, as a self-styled ‘travelling expert’, I thought I’d give her some advice.

Then I realised that it was highly possible that other people were also going abroad, so I decided to share this advice with everyone else. I have to be quick, however, because I’m making some eggs, and I’m not entirely sure how long one needs to leave them boiling for soft-boiled.

Here, therefore, are some potted words of wisdom:

1. Travelling is great because you get to meet new people. Some people are scared about this. This is foolish in the extreme. New people haven’t yet heard a single one of your over-used examples or oft-repeated anecdotes. The people you ought to be scared of are the ones you already know- they’re dying for you to give them some new material. New people have such low expectations of you it is impossible to disappoint. Revel in this.

2. Sometimes when you travel, you are offered food which is disgusting. In order not to cause offence, it is best to pretend to have an imaginary allergy. I have noticed this tactic is also being used by my friends in London, who seem to have an inexhaustible list of ‘intolerances’. Luckily, as the type of host who cooks exclusively for my own pleasure, I pay them no mind, and continue to serve popcorn for dinner.

3. No bed on earth is as comfortable as your own bed. Accept this, but do continue to ‘test’ as many people’s beds as possible while away, just for, you know, science.

4. Not every new person you meet will be interesting. Actually, not many of them will be. Or, really, hardly any. In fact, don’t listen to new people. It will only lead to disappointment. Use the time instead to gauge their reactions to your own stories. This will be very useful when you return home.

5. The very best part about travelling is returning home. No-one likes a guest who overstays their welcome. Sue, I’m talking to you.

It’s too late. These eggs are hard-boiled, and my toast soldiers are deeply disappointed.

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September 25, 2013 · 11:02 am

Childhood dreams

I have been thinking a lot lately about childhood dreams. Not the dreams one actually had as a child, although for several months I had a recurring dream that someone was coming to steal my little sister, so I was already pretty good at wish-fulfilment, but the things you thought, as a child, would happen when you were a grown-up.

‘I can’t believe how naive I was as a child,’ A friend said to me recently. ‘Yes,’ I agreed.’That must be embarrassing for you.’ Apparently, my friend wanted to talk about the gap between childhood expectations and her current reality. This was quite a long topic, and had several sentences where I did not hear my own name, so I used the time to recall my own childhood dreams.

1. Eat whatever I wanted for breakfast. Done.

2. Get take-away on a school night. Done. (Although this is unlikely to reoccur, as I am unable to correctly judge how much food we will need, so last time spent £50 a head on chinese food. I wish one of my childhood dreams had been to be a billionaire).

3. Have a walk-in wardrobe. This is a work in progress, but I am pretty sure I will soon convince my little sister to sleep on the sofa, and give up her bedroom to the cause.

4. Learn to speak French. This is because whenever my parents wanted to discuss something secret in our presence, they spoke in French. I still very much believe that French is the key to all grown-up power. Has everyone seen what Catherine Deneuve looks like? She’s 70.

5. Marry my Summer camp tennis coach.

‘You’re right,’ I interrupted my friend suddenly. ‘We should be paying more attention to our childhood dreams. I need you to help me locate my Summer camp tennis coach.’ My friend stared at me in confusion. ‘Yes,’ I continued. ‘I don’t remember his name, but he’s 5 years older than us, exceptionally handsome, and great at tennis.’ I smiled happily at my friend. ‘And then he can help me build my walk-in wardrobe.’ My friend was silent, so I added kindly, ‘And after that I can show you how to make the world’s greatest breakfast.’

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