LAUREN BRAVO - What the young person in your life is thinking.

 

12/04/07
Easter thoughts about Church

THIS Easter, as well as the traditional Sunday visit to my local Anglican, I’ve been appreciating another kind of Church.

Charlotte Church, actually, who is looking decidedly more rotund than her modest three months of pregnancy should by rights have produced as yet.

I’d like to think this is because good ol’ Char, ever the antidote to the ironing board/lollipop celebrity contingent (that’s physique, not a fad diet, just to clarify), blatantly found out the good news and went “Preggers? Wicked. Pass me that creme egg”.

And, with the shops full of empire-line smock dresses, which make everyone look as though they’re either five months gone or setting up a nice sideline in smuggling anyway, what better time for Ms. C to start putting it away? I would.

“Can I have a bit of lard with that leek?” she may well ask, from her regal place on a velvet cushion, balancing a Lindt bunny on her bump while Gavin massages her swollen feet and slices a Twix into her salad. The lass can’t drink any more, remember – all those alcohol calories have to be found elsewhere.

Like, um, Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey sandwiched between a couple of cookies… or a peanut butter and banana fried buttie… or a bit of brie, melted so it’s all runny in the middle, with some bacon…Whoops, just salivated on the keyboard, which can’t be good for the electrics.

Rest assured, dear reader, I myself am not eating for two. I’m eating for exams, which is surprisingly similar. The morning sickness, the night sweats, the feeling that your former carefree life is being slowly juiced under the colossal weight of responsibility until it is just a pulpy mess in the collecting tray of the great Compresser of Consequence (unfortunately I have no test on analogies formed around modern electrical kitchenware, or I’d be cruising).

And at the end of it all, after multiple hours of extreme pain, you give birth… to something I sincerely hope resembles a quality UCL 1st year English paper.

But at this stage, frankly, it could be all the lyrics to the Saved by the Bell theme tune written on an old tissue. “What am I hoping for?,” they ask. 2:1 or 2:2, I don’t mind as long as it’s healthy.

Oh, how I wish I could be one of those people who treat May like a party dress they need to get into. I wish stress left me only with cravings for cottage cheese salad and beetroot juice.

I wish I spent the whole revision period on a mad metabolism high, forgoing meals and public transport in favour of essay practice and jogging to the library, and came out of it at the end having gained a first and dropped a dress size. But, alas, in my world, a stack of custard creams is a study aid prized above pens.

As Mary Poppins (nearly) said, a spoonful of sugar helps the Old English paradigms and Medieval Literature thematic motifs go down… and the day I ignore Julie Andrews’ advice is the day I stop climbing every mountain until I find my dream (also the day I stop making frocks from the living room curtains, which would be a terrible shame indeed).

Make that sugar a spoonful of banoffee pie and we’re in business.

In a lecture a few weeks ago, I wrote a list of “all the books I’m supposed to have read this year but haven’t” (strikingly similar, you’ll find, to the original list written many months earlier, entitled Books I’m Meant to Read This Year) and found, to my horror, it was about 20 books long.

That’s a small Pret A Manger-worth of snacking before I’ve even got onto proper revision.

Each of these papery specimens seems to require its own appropriate form of nourishment to nurse me through – something French for Rousseau and Roland Barthes, maybe pommes frites or a pain au chocolat; something fanciful for Ovid, perhaps a soufflé or a packet of iced gems; humous for the Greek tragedies, a chicken leg for Chaucer, you get the picture.

And nothing but a stiff G&T will see me through 12 chapters of Wordsworth.

My difficult birth, at least, is only a month away, while Charlotte’s going to be in the smock dresses for another six. And when little Church does finally arrive, I really think she should call it Gulliver, after Swift’s political satire… or Guylian, after the praline seashells.


05/04/07
Nothing wrong with a few guilty pleasures

I don't believe anyone who ever goes on Desert Island Discs.

Not that I listen to Desert Island Discs, but they always do a little round-up of each guest’s choices in The Week. Not that I read The Week either… but it’s always open on the kitchen table when I’m hunting for the TV guide.

The point is nobody ever tells the truth on Desert Island Discs, but instead every week Professor Peter Benwick-Giles-Smith, author and lecturer at the University of Vague but Semi-Significant Importance, pretends he would choose seven pieces of classical music (not even ones you know from adverts).

An obligatory “lighter choice”, it seems, must always be something by The Beatles or Bob Dylan, to accompany him as he slowly died alone on a fictional shore.

We all know he’d really prefer Chicory Tip’s Son of My Father and something by Meatloaf.
I have nothing against classical music, but I refuse to believe just because somebody wears tweed jackets with suede elbow patches, they will necessarily pick The First Movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No 7 in F Major over a nice bit of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel.
 
Do classical aficionados have guilty pleasures?

Is liking the British Airways tune their equivalent to my secret penchant for The Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz? I’d be interested to know.

The clever person = classical buff assumption also rules supreme on University Challenge, which in my youth always led me to think I’d wake up one day, aged 19, with a burning desire to stick on a nice bit of Schubert.

However, unless they introduced a round based entirely on naming each Big Brother winner in chronological order, I think we can safely say I’m not quite what Paxman is looking for anyway.

Before you stop reading and flick to Monty, be assured I’m not going to indulge in any “don’t I have fabulous taste, everyone?” ego-exhibition by telling you my own Desert Island Discs (though if Splash FM ever do a knock-off feature, I’ll be in that seat faster than they can say “Lauren who?”).

Unlike my mother, who, presumably as the result of a delusion involving Paul Merton and a chance run-in at the Iceland checkout, has for weeks now been compiling her own list of peeves for an imaginary appearance Room 101.

She is known to wander into my room at sporadic intervals and shout “Short women who marry tall men! They’re just hogging all the good ones!” like a form of belligerent tourettes.

Her theory on this one is that short women should be prohibited from marrying tall blokes because they can make do perfectly well with medium ones, while tall women can only really marry tall men otherwise they look daft.

My observation is if this were put into practice we’d end up with a world populated only by giants and Liliputians.

We could end up with some sort of decidedly unbalanced civil war on our hands, but this doesn’t seem to faze her. I believe I have never seen her look so proud as she was upon discovering my current boyfriend’s only 5ft 9in.

I will tell you this, though: my DID list wouldn’t feature The Proclaimers, because Peter Kay has ruined them for me.

I realise I’m being controversially uncharitable here and a two-tonne red nose will probably fall from the sky and clobber me, but why did he have to take THAT song and make it embarrassing?

No longer joyful pub jukebox fodder, it must now be forever associated with Bobby Davro dancing with The Krankies like some kind of freakish nightmare journey into  my television childhood.

Of course, the project does have one redeeming feature – David Tennant. In a kilt, no less.

David and his quiffier  hair was possibly more brilliant than ever in the first episode of the new Dr Who series on Saturday. He is actually a genuine Proclaimers fan, a fact I know because I am a genuine Tennant fan, and more than familiar with the contents of his Wikipedia page.

He is 6ft 1in, which should more than please my mother.

I may not be on Desert Island Discs or University Challenge any time soon, but I think I’ve found my Mastermind special subject.


29/03/07
It’s a gruel, gruel world

THERE are a lot of little grown-up milestones along the path to adulthood.

Far be it from me to give you a nice list of heart-warming, Judy Blume-alike moments of emotional and personal growth (because it would make nauseous reading  . . . as well as because I don’t seem to have any), but even in the least Chicken-Soup-For-the-Soul of adolescences there are times you can’t help but marvel at your sudden maturity.

The first time you make a vaguely scary phone call without trying to make someone else do it for you.

The first time you tell  someone to take their coat off indoors so they’ll “feel the benefit” when they put it on again.

The first time you can watch a sex scene on telly with your parents without pretending to be furiously engrossed in the carpet pattern.

Oh, and yesterday’s particular example: leasing your first house. Perhaps not quite on par with resisting the urge to say “excuse me” after a trumpeting train horn goes off, but it’s still pretty big. I’m giggling into my Coco Pops.

How we’ve managed it I don’t know. Ten days ago, it was looking increasingly likely we’d end up fashioning our own flat-pack bedsit out of empty Foster’s cans and squatting in a discreet corner of Regents Park until Charles Saatchi discovered us and had us pickled as a kind of zeitgeist symbol of heartless government bureaucracy.

Which would have been nice, but a bit nicer is the five-bedroom end-of-terrace townhouse we’ve suddenly found and managed to fool some estate agents into thinking we’re worthy of sleeping in.

Ten days ago, we were mere children, now we are adults who use terms like assured short-hold tenancy contract and get excited about coving.

Of course, there are snags. Somewhere in between assigning ourselves roles from the Our House lyrics (‘Tara wears her Sunday best/Kirsty’s tired, she needs a rest/Pete is playing up downstairs’) and arguing over whose gubbins would best complement the massive front bedroom (mine, mine, mine), we’ve realised we won’t be able to afford to eat next year.

Unfortunately, Kirsty of Phil-and-Kirsty has influenced me beyond just a liking for statement coats – we’ve chosen location, location, location over food, glorious food and decided proximity to decent shops is more important than having the means to buy stuff from them.

So in keeping with the Victorian authenticity of our new home, we’re going to live on gruel.

Yum. Not only will it be cheap and filling, but it will also rectify all the vending machine action of this year and so we shall become known as “those fantastically fit and svelte people with the great house”.

And when the novelty of that plan wears thin (I give it two hours), we’re going to embrace my revolutionary new partying vision.

It goes like this: we have a house party. People come. In return for our generous hospitality and donation of our oxygen for their drinking and socialising needs for a few hours, they bring us food – a tin of beans, a packet of instant mash, several lobster . . . and thus the karma of the universe continues. No entrée, no entry. Genius.

I reckon one a month would keep the wolves from the door, and we can add “. . . who have the amazing parties” to the earlier list of our charms (NB – wolves not necessarily a metaphor, I’ve met worse on Camden Road of a night).

In the spirit of adult independence and modest domesticity, I’m also actually looking forward to not having a cleaner anymore.

Because halls of residence cleaners like to seek vengeance for the toasted cheese dried on to all our surfaces by throwing away half-full bottles of conditioner with a peal of gleeful laughter. And I can’t afford new TRESemmé three times a week any more than I can afford to live in a house with nice coving and stay nourished.

Of course, if a parent or five were to, say, drop by with a spare casserole, it would be rude of us not to welcome them with open arms. And if said parents wanted to wash up a few pans while they were at it, well, who would we be to stop them?

Some might consider that renouncing our independence . . . but it’s ok, I’ll just make a few scary phone calls and help people remember when to take their coat off. Thus is the adult way.


22/03/07
WE have been in the midst of that most entertaining of British experiences, the unexpected heatwave.

You might have noticed, if not through sharp observation, your flesh will have been on an eager mission to force its way out from beneath any fibres under which you have placed it.

Your midriff secretly comes out of hibernation and wants to be paraded through town centres.

Suddenly you’ll realise you’ve gone voluntarily sleeveless. Who would have thought it?

Not us, of course, because we’re never prepared for sunshine.

Parks up and down the country are filled with startled-looking Brits in weird shorts-anorak-bobble-hat-and-sunglasses combinations, everyone limping because they’d forgotten the agony that is the first week of flipflop blisters. 

I’ll begin getting panicky as I realise my tights-wearing days are numbered.

Everyone else is getting excited over Pimm’s and insect repellent, I’m clinging to my black opaques and shuddering when I walk past the Veet wax strips in Boots.

The most horrifying sign of impending summer came on the front cover of Heat magazine (which, naturally, I had to buy for research).

“The Biggest Celeb Bellies” it cries from the racks, cheerfully emblazoned across Vanessa Feltz, looking sturdy in a swimsuit.

It’s the kind of picture that would have weaker women crying into their Ryvita.

No doubt Vanessa will have taken it in her stride, perhaps in the happy knowledge she could snap Nicole Richie like a Twiglet, but it’s still a bit horrible because it signifies a larger truth (no pun intended, but quite clever now I’ve noticed it).  Spring is springing, and our flab is not.

It has been swelling smugly beneath nice layers of jumpers for five months, while we fed it on pie, and felt grateful for its insulation.

Now it’s prematurely fighting free with the aim of making us look like something Greenpeace would save, on a beach.

Unfairly, while Vanessa has access to an army of personal trainers and nutritionists, I, on the other hand, am a student.

It is our duty to get fat. In accordance with the laws of studentdom, we must gain at least 10 pounds by May or be forced to repeat the year again to work on our kebab intake (extra garlic mayo’s the answer, you should have learnt that during the condiment module).

Ever the conscientious student, I’m in no danger of failing – although I maintain that responsibility is out of my hands, as we have the best kebab shop in the world five minutes down the road (which, naturally, doesn’t stop us getting the bus back).

Woody Grill will change your mind about grease-laden meat shavings. They use tortilla instead of pitta, fresh cucumber and lettuce instead of wiggly bag salad, and whole green chillies for the brave.

It must be the mark of a truly great kebab shop if you contemplate going in a) during daylight hours, b) when you’re sober, and c) because all the nice blokes behind the counter know your usual.

Either that, or the mark of a truly gluttonous student. But we’ll go with the first one.

Because the truth is, even when I try to eat healthily, calories just creep in from nowhere and inhibit our bikini-wearing possibilities.

It is a good job I have a patented list of loopholes to ensure maximum consumption but minimise wobbly side-effects.

Take alcohol, for example. As far as I’m concerned, liquid should NOT COUNT. So it doesn’t. It is a beverage, it is refreshment. It is your third Bailey’s, because St Patrick would have wanted you to. Ditto, food eaten off other people’s plates.

My friend Sarah and I recently had a dieting breakthrough when we realised that if we bit every shortbread biscuit in two and ate half each, the result would be calorie-free snacking… because I’m eating half of her biscuit and she is eating half of mine. Genius.

Food eaten in celebration of something is fat-free, which is why I’m off to have a slice of Pete’s quarter-year-birthday cake.

Which, if I eat from Kirsty’s plate and wash down with a bottle of Beck’s, will be a glowing example of sensible eating. With this kind of attitude, we’ll all be svelte enough to truly embrace summer. I might tell Vanessa.

08/03/07
LIFE isn’t like films. I’ve done enough of my post-teen cynicism homework to know that Hugh Grant lies to people.

He, Richard Curtis and half the cab drivers in London are a big, money-making alliance, duping unsuspecting impressionable youngsters into believing that they are only ever a chance public meeting, kiss in the rain, punch-up in a fountain and last-minute taxi dash to the airport
away from living happily ever after in a townhouse with a Smeg fridge and a baby called Kiwi.

Of course, if life were like films it would be potentially disastrous for the economy, because the world’s workforce would be too busy being carried out of factories in the arms of naval officers to do anything productive.

Nobody’s phone would ever be engaged though, and we’d all be fantastically efficient because we’d be blessed with that super telepathic talent whereby you can arrange to meet someone without actually specifying a date, place or time (I always believe there must be a cursory follow-up text that we don’t get to see – ‘sorry, was so busy being charmingly foppish I forgot to say I’m taking you to Pizza Express with a 2 for 1 coupon I got on the back of a car park receipt’).

Most crucially, if life were like a film then I wouldn’t have been screwed over by trainline.com this week, and no monotone man in a distant call centre would have had to suffer my stream of expletives. 

I wish people wouldn’t ever tell me things are easy or painless, because then they invariably turn out to be neither. Piercings, injections, Jim Carrey films, and now the train website.

If Cheap Advance Fare C is £13 and Cheap Advance Fare B is £16, and they all claim to be completely identical, why the dickens would anyone ever pay £19 for Cheap Advance Fare A?

The whole process is like sitting one of those cognitive ability tests in year eight, where you’re never entirely sure that Anne Robinson isn’t going to burst forth from the stationery cupboard and reduce you to ash with a cosmic ray gun for thinking that if Suzie is older than Brian, then her height is the square root of Sandeep’s father’s cat.

And then, oh joy, just as I’ve confirmed my purchase and repaired the damage to my wall and knuckles, the website has the last laugh. “Chosen delivery method: pick up from fasticket machine at Euston station”.

No. Big, fat no. Because I definitely ticked the next day delivery box… because getting them from a ticket machine means having the credit card…which I don’t because it is happily at home in Worthing with its owner, my mother… because I never updated my card from Solo to a grownup one… because (and this seems to be the overriding root of the problem) I’m an idiot.

Which is how I find myself, £45 out of pocket and no longer friends with a couple of nice men in Delhi who refused to refund me or change the order, on a coach from Victoria to Birmingham and back.

They never get coaches in films, either. Which strikes me as something of a missed opportunity.

The last-minute passionate clinch in an airport departure lounge has been rather overdone now, so it’s about time we put Hugh on a National Express trip from Wolverhampton, next to Edna, who wants to show him photos of her grandchildren.

And coaches can be perfect spots for that filmic meeting scene — I should know, I accidentally lived through someone else’s on the way home yesterday.

Despite my normal trick of covering the next seat in assorted rubbish and looking intently psychotic/travelsick, I still ended up with someone sitting next to me.

Except he wasn’t someone, he was the leading man in Coach, Actually – the perfect three-hour romance under the reading light that never was.

Dior-model handsome, charming, artistic and just downright lovely, he was first-class RomCom fodder…but for my friend Tara, not me.

You see, sometimes life can be like a film, but only if we wander into someone else’s by accident.

Now I feel guilty for robbing someone of the “we sat next to each other on the 420 from Digbeth and it was love” story by not being single and not being interested.

“I met the love of your life on the coach home,” I tell Tara. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” Which is not something you ever hear Hugh Grant saying.


01/03/07
These are a few of my favourite things

I HAVE realised I’ve been a bit grumpy of late. In fact, looking back, I’ve been nothing short of Victor Meldrew in a miniskirt (nice visual for you to enjoy with your Shreddies there).

You see, when someone gives you free rein to air your rants to the good paper-buying population of Worthing, it becomes rather difficult to keep a lid on the niggles.

Suddenly, things you barely even realised bothered you have leapt, frog-like, from the recesses of your mind and immortalised themselves in print on the page. Fire alarms. Valentine’s Day. Inappropriate flip-flop wearing.

Yes, the world needs righting, and I’d like to do it through writing (good grief – apparently too much complaining has had the converse effect of turning self into one of those saccharine children who always won Blue Peter competitions).

However, much as I enjoy vying for a spot on Grumpy Old Women – preferably between Jenny Eclair and Muriel Gray – so we could create a kind of trinity of bleached belligerence, identifiable by our unnaturally platinum tresses and the smoke furling from our nostrils. I think enough is probably enough. Isn’t it?

Yes, I knew you’d agree. So this week, instead of another nice whinge about a rubbish aspect of life, probably those little white ulcer spots you get on the end of your tongue that hurt every time you eat curry, I thought I’d cast cynicism aside and take inspiration from The Sound of Music. No, seriously.

As hiring a local am-dram company to dress up as nuns and Nazis and march around Chapel Road yodelling was slightly out of my student budget, I’m instead going to divulge a few of my own favourite things.

This bout of happy life-appreciation may also be down to the new beret I bought on Monday, which has led me to believe I am Camden’s answer to Amélie, finding joy in the little incidences of je ne sais quoi which one encounters through the day.

For her, it was cracking crème brûlée and sliding her hand into big, cool bags of grain. For Ian Dury in Reasons to Be Cheerful, it was “Some of Buddy Holly, the working folly, Good golly Miss Molly and boats”. For me, it’s this little lot:

- The smell of new carpets. When the empty garage down my road was turned into a Carpet Right this week, I was perplexed to discover not everyone shares my feelings towards flooring fragrance. “Fantastic”, thought I, “if I’m feeling stressed I can pop in and have a sniff”, but a quick straw poll revealed my flatmates prefer the traditional method of booze, burgers and bed, to standing over some shag-pile and inhaling deeply. More fool them, my method is cheaper.

- Words that accidentally rhyme. Because I’m a poet who doesn’t know it, and wishes the world were more like a Dr Seuss book.
- Condiments. On some occasions, it would not be overstating it to say I enjoy the condiments more than I enjoy the meal. I particularly like it in gastro-pubs when they bring the condiment selection in a little bucket, as it seems to honour and respect the grave importance that tartare sauce, mayo and two kinds of mustard can have to one’s overall contentment in life. 
-  That fantastic rush of relief you get after you think you’ve lost your phone/wallet/keys/child, and then it turns out you hadn’t at all. 

-  Purse-purging. Anyone who has ever witnessed my wallet at its pregnant, pre-purging best will be able to appreciate the joy I experience every few months when I give it a good emptying. However, this is not just the desire to create order and harmony in my life (a disease I’ve mercifully never been inflicted with). No, I save every receipt, train ticket, cinema stub and chewing gum wrapper I acquire specifically so that when the purse is good and bulgy, to the extent where I have to switch to a larger bag to accommodate its bulk, I can have a jolly jaunt down consumer memory lane and relive all my purchases. Which looks an awful lot more shameful written down than it sounds in my head. Let’s move on.

- Extracting the filling of a custard cream biscuit all in one go with your teeth. An underrated skill, and one employers should take more notice of on my CV.

- Duvets on sofas. Unless you’re being forced to sleep on one, in which case the whole experience isn’t quite as thrilling. But generally, a duvet on a sofa is guaranteed happiness. Comfy underneath, comfy on top, like a toasty sandwich of comfyness. Largely the reserve of minor childhood illnesses, snow-days, decadent movie marathons and those days where you do nothing but eat toast and play PlayStation, a duvet on a sofa is a bit of nostalgic brilliance. 

- Pan-pipes albums. Usually easy listening hits of the 80s, there is nothing more wonderful than realising the ethereal sounds of the Peruvian mountains you’ve been listening to in a craft shop for the past two minutes is actually Lionel Ritchie’s All Night Long, played at a speed so serene it makes you think you want to buy glitter glue and start making your own bookmarks.
So there, I hope you’re now radiating with cheer. I’m off to track down some schnitzel with noodles, whatever it may turn out to be, and hope it doesn’t aggravate my tongue ulcer.


22/02/07
More here than meets the Eye

THERE are a lot of things that I believed before coming to uni which have since been proved wrong.

That vacuuming is a fulfilling hobby and something my mother enjoys doing; that one cannot exist on dried packet noodles alone; that it isn’t possible to sleep sitting up without one’s lecturer noticing; and that London is the centre of everything.

This last one is particularly noteworthy, and it has only been in the last few weeks that I’ve come to realise my error.

London likes to think it’s the centre of everything, and for the most part it is humoured. It’s where the Queen is. It’s where the Queen musical is.

And it’s where the most migraine-inducing retail jungle on earth, also known as Topshop Oxford Circus, resides. All lead characters in all chick-lit books (that reliable and accurate source of reality) always live in London.

As did Paddington Bear and the Wombles, just so the behatted-animal sector is represented (though I can’t verify how many times Great Uncle Bulgaria visited Koko on a Friday night).
But actually, I think the whole notion is a big lie, fabricated mainly by the Home Counties, to ensure we’re all so busy being ‘it’ that we don’t all go on weekend breaks to the countryside and clog up their land with our enormous handbags.



I’m sure Worthing is in on the secret, too, lapping up Londinium’s musical exports so that you can keep the Bucks Fizz and Eagles tribute acts to yourselves.

These are musical exports that I am barely aware of, of course, because I no longer watch TV, listen to the radio or read other people’s NME on the train. I live in a bubble. And a cloudy, polluted bubble at that.

I was forced to realise how truly out of touch I am the other day when my mother rang and instead of quizzing me on my nutritional habits like a normal parent, her opening gambit was “I’m sick to death of this Mika, aren’t you?”

To which I had to shamefully reply that I had no idea who she was talking about . . . but yes, I am still taking my multi-vitamins.

Quite scary is the idea that an artiste can complete the loop of emerging from obscurity, attracting a niche audience, earning some credibility, earning some fame, breaking into the mainstream, getting overplayed on Radio 2 and getting hyped enough for my mum to have had her fill, all without even registering on my radar.

Similarly, she was keen to discuss the political ins and outs of Celebrity Big Brother a few weeks ago when I had to admit I was more informed on the political ins and outs of Dickens’ Bleak House than I was on Jade Goody’s latest antics. Which is saying rather a lot, as naturally I never finished the book.

I never finished the book because, at the small expense of my English degree and possibly a few morals, I’ve devoted all my reading energy to my only real source of media enlightenment – London Lite.

Essentially just a makeshift umbrella/seat cover/filling afternoon snack with words and pictures on it, London Lite is about as trashy as reading matter gets without needing to buy it under a counter.

It’s free, for a start, handed out every 30 seconds down the road by individuals with the kind of sad, imploring eyes that tell you a logoed silver bomber jacket and jaunty baseball cap are not job perks that compensate for being snarled at by 3,000 commuters every afternoon.

Distributors are treated in the same manner as those clipboard-wielding charity campaigners, despite the obvious variance being that these ones don’t want my bank details. Or even a chat. They just want to enrich my life with the knowledge that Bianca Gasgoine wasn’t wearing any knickers in a taxi last night and far be it from me to deny them that pleasure.

It might be manageable if London Lite was the only one of its species, but alas, there are competitors.

There’s thelondonpaper, for days when I’m feeling slightly more discerning (don’t let the lowercase letters fool you, sometimes they actually squeeze some news in), and Metro, if I happen to venture into briefcase turf south of Oxford Street.

On one recent walk up Charing Cross Road, my companion was dismayed to find I’d picked up every variety of every free paper along the way and took it as a snub on their company. Which might have been forgivable had I not been on a date at the time.

You see, London cannot be the centre of everything, because we’re all too busy reading free papers talking about London being the centre of everything.

Which it can’t be, because we’re all too busy reading free papers . . . hmm. So, folks, be thankful you have this quality publication, and that nobody’s trying to condense your life down into ‘Lite’ format. Worthing, full-fat, and not a silver bomber jacket in sight.


15/02/07
Forget bonfires, embrace vanity

THE American novelist Thomas Wolfe once said: “The surest cure for vanity is loneliness”.

Which is wrong.

The surest cure for vanity is a 4am fire alarm in university halls, when your hair has turned itself into a mountain range overnight, and you have pillow imprint creases on your make-up-free face.

I’ll give Mr Wolfe the benefit of the doubt and say loneliness comes a close second – fitting, anyway, after the sight of you, sans mascara, with the Pennines on your head, sends everybody running in fear when you congregate in the car park.

Middle of the night fire alarms are one of those fantastic bonding experiences, like delayed trains or incredibly hot weather.

Or when there’s a noteworthy drunk doing something embarrassing on public transport, that force us to stop being formal and British, and accept humanity as it is (impatient, sweaty, and disturbingly compelled to have a look when someone’s urinating on a bus).

For in a fire alarm, vanity comes up against the mother of all oppositions – possible death – and we are forced to reassemble all our superficial priorities into an order that has surviving and not being deep-fried at the top, above never letting anyone find out I wear a hairnet and rollers in bed like a housewife from the ’50s, and other such trivialities.

When you’ve seen someone in a pair of snoopy pyjamas and a bite-guard, a deep link is forged between you that cannot be erased by mere issues such as actually liking each other.

Of course, the height of fire alarm excitement is Towel Law. The involuntary Russian Roulette of communal bathrooms, Towel Law states whatever time the fire alarm is set off, be it 5am or lunchtime, at least one person in the building must be having a shower.

Every time you wash, you risk being the one who stands outside in a towel while half of Camden’s fire service triple check every room then have a seemingly pointless half-hour chat in the foyer.

The rule, then, is shower quick to minimise the danger, and enjoy the adrenaline buzz each time the fateful bell goes and you’ve escaped the cruel blow of Towel Law yet again. One day, it will be you.

The real terror of the fire alarm, though, far beyond vaguely embarrassing nightwear or a tea tree face masque for men, is being seen with no make-up on.

Call me shallow. Call me insecure. Call me a rubbish feminist.

I’m not fussed as long as I can have a bit of slap on while you’re doing it.

Because, much as I would love to be one of those girls who rolls out of bed, puts on some lip salve and spends all day glowing like a milkmaid in a Thomas Hardy novel, my face just likes to wear make-up.

It sulks without it, and retaliates by making my eyes all small and squinty. People ask if I’m ill.

Actually, I lied just then – I wouldn’t like to be the wholesome, fresh-faced, milkmaidy type at all, because they are usually insufferably smug about the whole thing.

Furthermore, I could cheerfully punch all those men who profess to prefer the natural look, unaware that the look they have in mind requires more scientific trickery and skilled technical procedure than a space launch.

Faced with the real natural look – blotchy, squinty, bristly and unstraightened, like a nation of female Calibans – how many would decide that a touch of eyeliner isn’t such a bad thing after all?

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then vanity must surely be in the eye of whoever saw the object preening and pruning themselves before they went to meet said beholder.

My friend Tara, whose place in my life is largely dependent on always being as ridiculous, if not more ridiculous than myself, recently claimed that if she woke up in a burning building with time to grab only one object, it would be her make-up bag.

Photos, pets, even shoes, could all be forsaken provided she doesn’t have to spend the few hours between escape and the shops opening in a mascaraless state.

Which, of course, is ridiculous, and I can promise even I wouldn’t sink to that level of vanity.

No, I’ve sensibly taken to sleeping in my make-up instead. Just in case.


08/02/07
I love parties, I just don’t like hosting them

IF there’s one thing in life that gets me in a tizzy, good and proper, it’s hosting things.

Actually there are a considerable number of things that get me in a tizzy, misuse of the apostrophe and people who wear flipflops in inappropriate weather being just two guaranteed to have me tutting like a grandmother. But yes, hosting things is right at the top of the tizz-ometer. I hate having parties.

In theory it’s all very delightful; believing oneself to be a hybrid of Margo from The Good Life and Bridget Jones’ mother, wafting around in a Grecian chiffon maxi dress with a tray of mini-gherkins and cocktail onions ensuring everyone is only a trifle-serving away from having the absolute time of their life and never wanting to go home.

But rarely does my life ever bear much semblance to The Good Life (or my bottom to Felicity Kendal’s, more’s the pity).

I don’t keep a goat, I live in Camden not Surbiton (the difference is 500 emo kids getting underage tattoos), and I don’t have the kind of friends who can be kept happy for a night by mini vol-au-vents and a chat about Mr Next Door’s promotion.

The rather obvious obstacle to this dream, of course, is that I’m 19 and not 59 — a hardship I’m gradually learning to deal with, though it isn’t easy and my desire to wear crimpolene and a rain mate grows stronger every day.

Having a party, or anything vaguely resembling a party, is one of those situations where the amount of fun being had by other people is inversely proportional to the amount you’re having yourself.

Thus it always seems for any shindig to be reasonably successful, you yourself must be bright red and collapsed over a dip selection, breathing into a paper bag.

It puts me in mind of my dear friend Hannah (frequent regular in this column, not least because she throws a tantrum otherwise), who over 18 years of scary academic amazingness has patented “exam redness”.

She passes them all with flying colours, but has to have a minor breakdown and fit of spectacular rosacea in order to do so.

Aware that I ought to stop this whine-wagon just before it reaches true Grumpy Old Women territory, I do actually like parties. I like going to other people’s, forgetting to B.Y.O.B., commandeering the music and leaving before the cleaning up gets underway.

But this is always done with the happy gusto of someone very glad they are not the host, who can normally be found trying to glue a Ming vase back together with one hand and steering someone away from being sick in the laundry basket with the other.

Which leaves no spare hands for passing round sausages on sticks, potential Mrs Ledbetters might note.

I’d like to think, though, that even for the most hardened hostesses with the mostesses, the Mrs Dalloways and Sarah Fergusons and Elton Johns of this world, there must be that point in their fabulously fabulous soirées where they secretly wish everyone would just shove off home and leave them to watch Dancing On Ice in their dressing gown. Surely?

Possibly the best party I’ve ever hosted was my 10th birthday sleepover, when I magically managed to become really ill about half an hour after everyone arrived and went to bed for the rest of the night, leaving my guests to have the time of their lives without me.

Which they did, and spent the rest of year five regaling me with anecdotes from the night that ended “guess you had to be there… oh wait, you were.”

You can imagine my horror and mild amusement, then, when I recently found I had unwittingly agreed to be secretary on the “social committee” for my halls site. Me. Planning parties.

Not just this, but taking minutes at meetings about planning parties. Writing emails about planning parties. Swanning about at said parties telling guests, satisfied or otherwise, that “yar, I planned it all, don’t you know?”

I’m getting Hannah’s panic rosacea just thinking about it… which reminds me of another friend, the fantastically ambivalent Joey. I should learn to live by her motto, the one that kept her safely out of the party-planning-charity-fundraiser-organising-fête-arranging-cake-baking spectrum for all of our high school years: “Don’t put your name on stupid lists”.

Pass me that paper bag, and a cocktail onion if there are any.


01/02/07

18/01/07

04/01/07

14/12/06
Xmas: Wait ’till I get home or there’ll be trouble

“WHEN Mary and Joseph finally arrived, Bethlehem was very busy” says the little window on my advent calendar this morning.

And for a second I actually find myself thinking “Ah, just like Oxford Street then”, before feeling thoroughly ashamed for thinking such a terrible, corrupt and consumerist notion as this, and going off to light a cinnamon candle and meditate on goodwill to all men for a bit.

London in December is rather like one of those straight-to-video movies with the Olsen twins or suchlike, in which they discover that the true meaning of Christmas is togetherness by frolicking through New York in a series of cute wintry outfits — in other words, it has the appearance of glossy festive loveliness, and underneath everyone just feels stressed and slightly sick.

There’s also, and I don’t remember feeling this nearly as much back home with you folks, this tremendous feeling that whatever you are doing is not nearly as Christmassy and magical as something you could be doing. Queuing in HSBC?

Pah, you should be ice-skating at Somerset House in a long coat and fur muff, like something in a Victorian scene on a biscuit tin. Or singing along to the Pogues in a pub with an open fire, waving a flagon of ale in the air.

Or playing the tuba in a Selfridges window display, covered head to toe in gold glitter. Or something.

However, despite the hours I’ve spent this week shoe-horned between power shoppers yelling “but does he want the Dr Who activity sticker super-cosmic alien case files book, or the Dr Who super-cosmic case file alien sticker activity annual?” into a mobile, I am very, very excited about Christmas.

I keep finding myself lost in little dreams about cheesy footballs and marzipan when I should be writing an essay on Wordsworth, or crossing the road safely.

It’s amazing what liberal application of mulled wine, posh cheeses and re-runs of the Vicar of Dibley can do for the mind.

They erase all memory of the portion of last year you devoted to assembling a Barbie Dreamhouse or other such plastic concoction from instructions entirely in Taiwanese, or being alternately burnt and electrocuted by fairy lights that never had any intention of working before you started untangling them, or slaving over sprouts that nobody will eat but everyone wants on the table for “tradition’s sake”, and instead make you think the whole season was a rose-tinted bundle of joy from start to finish.

Which, of course, it was, because I’m still young enough to avoid all of the above and just watch telly.

Living away from home is making the prospect doubly exciting, as alongside the usual excuse of festive decadence, I now have “Oh, but I’ve been living in a vermin-infested student hovel for three months, take pity on me” to ensure I have sole ownership of the remote control and dustbin-sized tin of Quality Street well into the new year.

However, there is also the worry that by the time I roll in on the 17th, the Bravo Christmas will be well underway and I will have missed my part in it.

Thus strict instructions are being issued governing the exact amount of yuletide merriment allowed in my absence (take note, family, as I’m not ringing to repeat this): minor decorations may be put up in the house — wreath on door, tinsel round the picture frames, hopeful strings pinned up for the predicted flurry of cards from people whose association with us we can’t entirely remember, etc.

However, absolutely NOTHING must be done in the way of tree decorating until I get home.
Flouting this rule will be pointless, as I will inevitably take everything off and do it again anyway.

Likewise, nobody may annotate the special bumper Radio Times in red biro until I am available for consultation, and nor must the Perry Como Christmas LP be removed from its sleeve for ironic playing until I am there to appreciate it.

Nobody may partake in our family tradition of visiting all the garden centres along Littlehampton Road, for no particular reason except that we did it one year and so now it feels Christmassy.

And nobody may watch The Santa Clause without me. This is the law.

7/12/06
To suggest that Jade Goody may have eaten more than her fair share of pies would, of course, be contrary to the latest pictures of her . . .

30/11/06
For the best part of pstub, then read on

IF you follow this column (in the loosest possible sense of the word “follow”, rather as Alice followed the Wonderland Caucus race), or even just happened to accidentally read the article in question from underneath some battered cod, you’ll remember I wrote a few weeks ago about not getting any sleep.

You’ll want to know, then, that despite a half-hearted ticking off from my father and small fortune spent on Pro-plus tablets, the nocturnal antics haven’t ceased. Interestingly, though, I seem to have re-set my body clock.

Now my brain can cruise along quite happily until about 3am before it starts muttering “I say old girl, a nap wouldn’t go amiss…”, then retires to the land of duvet until lunchtime, should my schedule (or the ever-active building fire alarm) allow it.

Of course, this new order of things means I’m living completely out of sync with the rest of the world. My “morning” is enjoyed while normal, non-student citizens are coming home from school or having mid-afternoon conference calls, like living in a parallel universe of Spike Milligan design. I keep expecting my kettle to start talking.

The most interesting result of this new perspective on the world (more interesting than the constant urge to remark “good gracious, is it REALLY that time already?” 47 times a day, in any case) is that my friends and I appear to have reconditioned our stomachs along with our sleeping cycles.

“Breakfast” is more likely to be a bowl of chilli noodles than Frosted Shreddies, eaten at 3pm with that smugly decadent air that only students can get away with (and only then because we have an anvil of debt hovering over our hedonistic heads, waiting to bring us crashingly back down to earth the moment they hand us the diploma).

16/11/06

02/11/06

19/10/06
THERE are many dilemmas surrounding student dressing – how conspicuous is this Marmite stain?   

Can I really pull off an outfit entirely in shades of khaki? 

Can you still be a credible trustafarian* if your underwear is clearly from Marks & Spencer?

But never did I expect to be pondering which of my garments looked best with a black armband, or shopping for a lacy black bonnet in a Queen Victoria-inspired fit of grief. My iPod, you see, is dying.

As a mere whippersnapper, I wrote a piece for this paper about my iPod.

Written in the first throes of young love, it was a suitably gushy ode to the little white machine I had christened “my new boyfriend”, full of rose-tinted declarations about his dependability, his impeccable taste, and the beautiful future we were going to have together.

There were photos: I, fresh-faced and radiant, he, shiny and scratch-free, looking like one of those Big Brother couples on their first cover of Heat.

Two years, many playlists, one new battery and a few near-miss dropping incidents later, the honeymoon period is definitely over.

We’re on our fifth Heat cover, the one with separate photos where I’m wearing no make-up and he looks like he could do with a stint in mp3 rehab.

First came the arguments. Trifling tiffs at first; him playing me Bob Marley when I expressly asked for Dylan, or my being too demanding with the shuffle button and him freezing by way of response – a technological variation on the “cold shoulder” that one doesn’t much appreciate when the non-musical alternative is playing I-spy with one’s sibling from Worthing to Wales (clue: the answer’s probably sheep).

But these hitches were minimal, nothing a few runs of the Beatles’ We Can Work It Out couldn’t cure.

No, the cracks in the relationship really started to show around January of this year, when . . . I’ll admit it, but please don’t judge me . . . I was unfaithful.

When my mint-condition, 1960s, genuine Dansette record player arrived on the scene, I knew that despite my best intentions, I would never be able to remain musically monogamous.

As all philanderers do at first, I thought I could find room in my life for both. Dansette, being the size of a small suitcase, with an accompanying pile of vinyl, could clearly not be a satisfying train companion in the way that Mr Pod could, and thus both boyfriends had their separate roles and could live in harmony side by side.

Until, that is, I started (unfairly, I appreciate, but there comes a time with every gadget/spouse when you just have to push them to their limits) taking Mr Pod to dusty record shops, making him sit in my handbag for hours while I trawled through boxes of old blues LPs and compared prices on Motown singles. Understandably, he got jealous.

An icon of the technological age he may be, but he knows that the dust and scratches on my copy of Sergeant Pepper are like manly scars on the stubbly chin of a jungle explorer – life experience wins every time.

But little did I know that my reckless infidelity would drive poor Poddy to his deathbed.

After a big, public fight in which he wiped out all of my playlists and I said a lot of hurtful things I didn’t really mean, his health took a turn for the worse.

He can’t remember half of the music I’ve uploaded. He doesn’t have the strength to connect to my laptop and he can’t make it to the corner shop without cutting out.

Now, of course, I am the very model of remorse, because as punishment for my musical mischief, I look set to become an iWidow. Wreaths would be appreciated, miracle cures more so.

He looks so small and helpless, lying there on my desk, permanently plugged into his charger as though he were on life support, while I weep delicately into a hanky and play Abba’s Thank You For the Music on a loop (at times like this, matters of taste have to be overlooked in favour of being appallingly melodramatic).

I only hope he can hang on in there, even if just as a shadow of his former self. Of course, I could spend a nice chunk of my student loan on a new one, but it just wouldn’t be the same . . . because, as Paul McCartney is singing from Dansette at this very moment, money can’t buy me love.

* The Editor consulted an online dictionary of slang to discover that a “trustafarian” is described in various terms, including: a spoiled white rich kid who lives with poorer people, probably has fake dreadlocks and might or might not smoke pot, listens to Grateful Dead tribute bands and says “peace” instead of “bye”, all in a misguided attempt to gain credibility, or street-cred, while disguising the trust fund they actually live off. It doesn’t sound like Lauren at all.


12/10/06
LIVING, as I am, with students of so many different nationalities, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my own cultural identity.

Aside from a fiercely patriotic appreciation of Marmite and the mild disappointment secretly felt when stepping out to find the weather flawless and thus un-complain-about-able, what sets me apart in the exotic mixing pot of my corridor as being especially British? Or even, for the sake of some red-and-white controversy, English?

It’s come to worry me that my flatmates probably think the answer lies with my uncanny ability to own half the Tesco homewares department without using anything other than a kettle — while my Chinese friends turn the kitchen into an emporium of delicious smells every night, I cower in a corner with a Pot Noodle and can of Red Bull like an exile from the land of nutrition, sure that at any moment Gillian McKeith will arrive and start prodding me with a courgette.

When someone asks to learn how to cook traditional British fare, we show them Spag Bol made with ketchup.

But just as I start to believe my British heritage boils down only to an encyclopaedic knowledge of Kinks lyrics and the belief that John Cleese, Stephen Fry and Griff Rhys Jones should one day get together and run the country, an opportunity presents itself for a show of extreme, foolhardy Britishness like no other.

Even above the art of competitive Hobnob-dunking and synchronised pre-Christmas parsnip warfare in the aisles of Sainsbury’s, this activity demonstrates the perfect combination of stamina, determination and daftness to such extent that I truly, honestly regard it as our national sport. Ladies and Gentlemen: queuing.

Yes, my oriental friends may have a winning way with soy sauce and New Year shindigs, but when you need several hundred people to stand behind one another in a state of mild agitation for the best part of a day, no one will do it like the Brits.

There are varying types of queuing, each with their own individual challenges and degree of difficulty, from the warming-up-exercise that is queuing for the shower in the morning (extra points awarded here for those who manage to maintain a grip on both their towel and their sense of perspective while flatmate X shampoos his chest hair without a care in the world) to the professional-standard queuing Olympics otherwise known as Chessington World of Adventures, where the line-standing marathon is only one of many events designed to push human endurance to its very furthest extremities. 

Others include the seven-hour cross-country hike required to locate the right car in the right sector of the right car park at the end of the day, and the consumption of enough carbonated soft drinks to power Professor Burp’s Bubble Works for near on a month.

Never have I felt such a huge sense of queuing achievement, though, than after this Friday night.
Our trip to East London club Fabric (or if I’m being accurate, our trip to the pavement outside it) threw up every obstacle to queuing success in the book.
It was cold. It was night time.

There were sadistic bouncers, giddy on power and the thrill of wearing the same black bomber jacket and mike headset as five other burly men, working through their rage at not making it into the Marines by inflicting it on us.

There was a hot dog stand mere feet away on the other side of the railings, emitting the kind of smells that you know the taste will never live up to but drive you to hallucination anyway. There were full bladders, the less said of which the better.

And there was British spirit. There’s nothing like being communally cheesed-off to help you bond with complete strangers — I like to think it’s the same make-do-and-mend morale that our grandparents championed in the war, this ability to take a grim situation and turn it into one of mirth and recipe-swapping.

I met a nice young man from Peckham and advised him on his university applications. I played several very accomplished games of I-spy and I learned the best way to sweet-talk a bouncer into letting your friend back into the queue after he’s left to relieve himself in a nearby alley.

Another British trait to be admired, of course, is knowing when to give up. Which we did, after four hours of hardcore queuing, and went to get kebabs. Accounting this story the next morning to a flatmate, she looks puzzled and asks “so why was it that people queued for so long? Was the club meant to be that good?”.

“Oh no”, I reply, “It was so we could moan about it afterwards”. And you can’t get more British than that.



05/10/06
WHY I REALLY LIKE DOING THE IRONY
THOSE who know me well will know there is nothing I enjoy more in life than a nice spot of irony (not to be confused with a nice spot of ironing; I tend to believe creases add character to an otherwise mediocre outfit), but the great joke of being labelled a Fresher when I feel about as fresh as the yellowing bag of mixed leaf salad that’s been in our communal fridge since Friday is starting to wear thin.

A more enthusiastic person might be treasuring this feeling; relishing each metaphorical curled spinach leaf as a souvenir of their entrance into the university of life.
“Hurrah! This sandpaper throat must be the beginnings of the legendary Freshers Flu!” they might gleefully declare.

“My feet enjoyed that half hour detour down Camden High Street in stilettos so much they’re still throbbing three days later!
Marvellous!” you’ll hear them proudly asserting in the SU bar.
“I can’t actually eat solid food again yet”, one cheerful soul will boast.
Not so me.

No, I’ve come to realise I am too cynical for Freshers Week.
I am too cynical for many things in life – this is why I’ve never been able to appreciate Celebrity Love Island or Tom Jones’ hair with quite the fervour they deserve.

Where the noble institution of Freshers Week is concerned, I am a groaning, eye-rolling machine.

Phrases like ‘Vodka Redbull drinks promo’ and ‘Back 2 Skool Nite’ strike individual notes of terror in me, the former mainly because it is likely to mean dancing round puddles of vomit on the pavement in order to escape, the latter because, as a former Davison Girl, I’m fairly unacquainted with the notion of school uniform as a minxy St Trinian’s costume and would most likely turn up in my old shin-length navy pleats and wonder why everyone was staring.

However, cynicism was left in the cloakroom (well all right, I decanted some into my handbag in case of emergencies) for our outing to the Ministry of Sound, that enormous day-glo temple to trance, and other than recoiling in horror when asked to shell out £4.50 for one bottle of Becks (a price for which I expected it served to me on a silk pillow with a small personal cherub to aid my sipping), it was fun.

It was fun to dance in a club where the floor isn’t sticky and the toilets have an attendant and doors that lock.
It was fun to text my friends in their respective corners of the country to say I’d “been called to the Ministry”.

It was fun to do the big-fish-little-fish-cardboard-box dance with straight face.
It was fun to pretend we were on an advert for an Ibiza Cream Classics compilation CD.
It was fun to know I’d never have to go back again. 

The important thing to understand about Freshers Week is this:
Hollyoaks lies.
It is a worthwhile notion to grasp generally in life, to avoid disappointment the day you discover that the real residents of Chester are for the best part not nubile, colt-limbed Topshop adverts with immaculate highlights and gym memberships they actually use, but it is especially true of Freshers Week.

On Hollyoaks, Freshers Week tends to begin with a trip to A&E and end with a trip to an STI clinic, like a Club 18-30 holiday with A levels.
Nowhere do Hollyoaks ever feature a corridor of students watching Fawlty Towers and building a card pyramid to while away the midnight hours (and it was a wild night, thank you very much).

Yes, Freshers Week is a myth.
For every rookie student lying naked with his head in a gutter, there will be 20 eating ketchup on toast in their kitchen and debating the origins of various stains on the ceiling.

Or popping into Tesco Express on the way back from the pub because queueing is more interesting when you’re intoxicated.

To end this on another lovely dose of irony, just after I finished the previous paragraph there was a roar from outside, and I watched from the window as a chap with a sensible haircut stripped down to his yellow boxers and fell in a bush.

Someone get that boy a part on Hollyoaks.

I’m going to bed.

21/09/06
MY GUILTY SECRETS. OODLES OF PRIMARK UNDERWEAR, HEAT MAGAZINE, AND...
IF you were paying attention to last week’s offering (you’re probably a rare breed, possibly limited only to my friend Hannah’s hairdresser, for whose readership I am always very grateful), you will know that I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights recently.
What you won’t know is that the nights I’ve spent battling the moth population of Worthing, though grisly and often reminiscent of a low-budget Hitchcock remake, have been nonetheless productive because they introduced me to the genius that is ITV Play.
As far as I can discern, the people at ITV Play have three main objectives:
1) To ensure that shift workers, new parents, insomniacs and students have suitable distraction during the wee small hours to prevent them from all turning to the Open University, becoming fantastically adept at quantum physics and realising that ITV has no true use in the modern world;
2) To provide employment for former Big Brother contestants and Hollyoaks actors who have fallen on hard times;
3) To make a disgustingly vast amount of money.
It is, essentially, the shopping channel for people who’ve already bought everything from the shopping channel and now need to win back all the money they spent on yoghurt makers and fleeces with arctic wolf motifs on them.
Except that they never will win back all the money because, in my (extensive) experience, the standard call goes something like this:-
Overly Perky Presenter: “Hi there Jean in Slough, thanks for ringing again! The clue is ‘The Wizard of _______ blank’. For £450 and a free novelty lampshade, what’s your answer?”
Nervous Caller High On Caffeine: “um…er…Oz?”
Overly Perky Presenter: “I’m SORRY, the answer was ‘courgettes’. Better luck next time, Jean!”
And, believe me, there will be a next time, because poor Jean is now hooked.
Of course, in order to reach this illusive stage of limitless opportunity and a neon-lit Brian Dowling, the unfortunate caller must first shell out so much dough in dead-end phone calls that they are, in effect, in the game for only the novelty lampshade.
But this is not the point.
In fact, one commonly reaches a point where handing over your kids’ college fund to the folks at ITV seems the least you can do in exchange for their gift to you – namely drawing you so deep into their kitschy world of cash that suddenly it’s 4am and you might as well not go to sleep at all.
Think of all you can achieve in the doily-crocheting/toenail-painting/toasted-sandwich-innovation arena with those spare hours.
Heck, I’ve used it to write most of these articles.
The fact is, however much I mock it, I love terrible TV.
I love it like a best friend who will never judge me because they’ve always done worse.
I used to love it in the same way I love Heat magazine and bulk-buying Primark underwear, as a vice to binge on only every so often because it makes me feel guilty and queasy afterwards, but now after an entire summer spent in my pyjamas watching marathons of My Super Sweet 16 and Tiara Girls on MTVUK (a channel which, these days, tends to make ITV2 look like the televisual equivalent of a James Joyce novel), I appear to have developed immunity to their more repellent aspects.
I can devour an entire afternoon of back-to-back episodes without the slightest twinge of nausea.
Trash TV is my new drug of choice, and I’ve gone hardcore.
In five days, however, I’m going cold turkey.
In a process that by rights deserves an MTV slot of its own (maybe called Strictly No Deal or No Deal Fever, for want of a less confusing title), I’m embarking on an entire term of uni without TV.
The sweats and shakes are setting in as I have a meagre 120 hours in which to cram as much tasteless, mindless, sequins-and-collagen telly as possible before I am cut off.
Casting an eye over the next few months’ scheduling is enough to make a girl weep…a new series of Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1, every episode from every season of Sex and the City on Paramount Comedy, David Tennant being deliciously Scottish on Who Do You Think You Are?, the chance to see if The Charlotte Church Show will ever truly deserve the place I’ve reserved it in my heart…
I’ve lost sight of why I’m doing a degree at all now.
Addiction aside, it does seem wrong to be a student who is TV-teetotal.
What, after all, is studentdom about if not watching Jeremy Kyle with a bowl of supernoodles at breakfast time?
No, the abstinence plan seems doomed to fail.
Instead, I think I’ll use the next five nights to see if I can’t win the money to pay for the licence on ITV Play.
And a novelty lampshade will always come in handy.

14/09/06
PARDON me, I’m yawning as a write this.
Yet another night of sleep has been sacrificed to the tyrannical Über Moth, and I’m not happy.
Über Moth and I do not have a good relationship.
In fact, I have a poor relationship with the animal kingdom in general.
I am inclined to believe the blame lies with Disney — the childhood hours spent wailing in mourning for Bambi’s mother and Simba’s dad seem to have left an indelible mark on my psyche where our furry friends are concerned.
This aversion to anything cuddly and mobile was deepened with the deaths of Sunny and Waffles, who chose Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve respectively to make their exits to the big hamster wheel in the sky.
Even goldfish have had a rough time of it in the Bravo household and now the closest I get to marine friendships involves chips, vinegar and a pineapple fritter to finish.
It was bad enough being made to feel like Cruella De Ville (I even have a fur coat, though I stress it’s M and S acrylic circa the 1970s rather than one of Mr and Mrs Mink’s beloved offspring) for wincing when my friend’s Labradors massacre my tights, now I can’t even get some shut-eye without first waging war on Über Moth with a rolled-up Vogue and a hoover.
What Über Moth’s intentions are, I’m not sure; possibly to avenge the deaths of all the minibeast pals of his that I’ve crushed, smushed and drowned over the years by robbing me of so much sleep my internal organs eventually shut down and I expire.
Or maybe he just finds the sight of my shrieking, pyjama-clad form dancing across the room wielding a can of deodorant like a machete at 1am too irresistible an entertainment to pass by.
All I know is that despite being rational, sane and surprisingly gung-ho in all (most) other areas of life, there is something about the flapping of leathery little wings against the inside of my lampshade in the wee small hours that brings out my inner banshee (perhaps it is this kind of relentless spirit for fruitless sporting activity that means Über Moth and I are destined to never find friendship).
It is not the same individual moth, you understand, with whom I am embroiled every night (prepared to live with the guilt and the knowledge that Pete from Big Brother will probably never marry me, I see to it that they all end up ex-moths).
No, they are all descendents of the original ÜM – members of the Über Moth dynasty, like the Blackadder of the insect world, who inherit from their forefathers a hairy stomach, wings like a Barbour jacket and a desire to make my life a sleepless, holey-jumpered hell.
Every night.
And so the circus begins.
Me, emitting squeals of a frequency only dogs and Joe Pasquale can hear, drawing on 11 years of ballet training to pirouette deftly across the carpet brandishing the nearest domestic weapon to hand.
If it squirts, good.
If it can be flung to messy result against my opponent as it takes a breather on the wall, better.
Unfortunately, the 11 years spent practising plies in a tutu left little time for perfecting my bowling skills, and I can often hear the voice of my high school P.E. teacher echoing around me as Über Moth avoids my feebly-thrown ankle boot and hides under a cushion.
I duly sit on the cushion, prepared to sacrifice the satin cover to a little dusty moth residue if it means I can go to sleep, but ÜM has other ideas and scarpers.
Thus a little battle I like to term my “Winged Waterloo” begins, me making vain attempts to second-guess ÜM while he third, fourth and fifth-guesses me, dancing in merry circles on the ceiling until I have to resort to the inevitable conclusion, a finale that will involve more pain and anguish than anything my foe and his flapping cronies have ever encountered.
Wake up my father.
The question, of course, is this: what the dickens am I going to do about Über Moth’s London-dwelling relatives when I start uni in a fortnight’s time?
Actually, this question is not mine at all, but rather my father’s weary 1am plea from my doorway seven nights a week as he finishes his (fairly large) role in Operation Moth Removal.
To which I reply with the obvious “befriend the beefy rugby player down the corridor and bake him shortbread to say thank you.”


07/09/06
MY FATHER'S MID LIFE MUSIC TASTE CRISIS
MY Dad has just confessed he is “going through a prog phase”.
A relatively well-hidden secret for several months, it nonetheless had to be confronted when he came home the other night clutching a copy of Classic Rock magazine, on the cover of which the faces of Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson nestled in a graphic designer’s dream of rainbow swirls and toadstools.
He’s even started listening to ELO without feeling the tiniest twinge of shame.

Obviously this kind of revelation is a blow to any happy household, but after talking it through extensively and ringing a Channel 4 helpline, we’ve come to accept that a penchant for King Crimson makes him no less of a loving father, whatever the neighbours may whisper when our backs are turned.

I’m joking, you realise, but only just.
And I would never judge anyone on their taste, or lack of it, in the complex minefield that is music.
I’m joking again; of course I would.

The reason I think this recent turn of events worthy of column inches is it seems to be signalling some kind of milestone mid-life taste reassessment — granted a fondness for epic keyboard solos is preferable to him bleaching his hair, buying a Mustang, or raving it up in Liquid Lounge on a Friday night, but it still warrants a raised eyebrow on my part.

Largely because I know Dad’s 18-year-old self would have been doing the same.

In fact, accompanying the scornful eyebrow activity, I’d like to think that the Dad of ’78 would have been spitting a gobful of disdain over the Dad of 2006 and his recent proggy tendencies.

This is a man who rode the New Wave like a tartan-trousered pro with a copy of Melody Maker in place of a surfboard.

A man from whom I have inherited an original Dymo label maker, everything Elvis Costello ever committed to vinyl and an appreciation for electro ensembles with hair like Nazi Youth.

We have a photo of him in his early journalistic days with Jake Burns from Stiff Little Fingers (we also have one of him with Cliff Richard — it’s been a mixed 28 years).

And now we have the image of him betraying his post-public-school-post-punk roots by listening to a band named Spock’s Beard with all the fervour he once reserved for pogoing to The Undertones.

Somewhere, sitting on his pearly cloud, John Peel is weeping.

And Dad’s rocky progression into progressive rock (I am thankful, of course, for the opportunities he’s given me for wordplay of this calibre) has now got me worried.

Perhaps succumbing to the taste pariahs of our youth is an inevitable part of the ageing process, along with thermal underwear and making groaning noises every time one exits an armchair.

Will I, one day in 2036, wake up with a burning desire to listen to Razorlight?
Am I, with the onset of middle-age spread and crow’s feet, going to have an epiphany and suddenly understand the appeal of Snow Patrol?

While all around me are monitoring their cholesterol like it’s HIV positive and applying for a life insurance package with a free carriage clock, am I going to be consulting a taste therapist about my alarming urge to go out and purchase a Keane album?

The very thought makes me shudder.

Taste, you see, is a tricky subject in post-modern society.
Never are lines more blurred than between the realms of good taste, irony and destined to spend the rest of life attending tribute concerts at Pontins.

I have long exercised a belief in proper musical education, the younger the better, preferably taught alongside times tables in the nation’s primary schools.

Had I been exposed to Sergeant Pepper, Ziggy Stardust and friends in the curriculum during my infant years, I might have been spared the period I spent thinking the Vengaboys had the monopoly on musical innovation.

Of course charity begins at home, and as a result I would like to wager my little brother is the only 11-year-old in the West Sussex area with the Velvet Underground on his iPod (he remains largely unaware of this fact, but that’s beside the point).

He knows the difference between Keiths Richards and Moon and can recite Jam lyrics by heart.

And while I concentrate my efforts on the future generation, Dad can listen to Jethro Tull in peace.

With headphones.



31/08/06
BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEAS
I HAVE recently had to come to terms with the fact that I am gullible, having been successfully lied to by two of the most trusted institutions in western society: medicine and, er, astrology.
First, Shelley Von Strunckel in the Sunday Times seemed very sure I was going to fail my A levels, and embark on a long life as a professional beachcomber, reciting William Blake while I walked along the sand as a tribute to my former life as an academic.
“Aquarius: While you’re losing one dream, you’re being cornered into pursuing something deeply unappealing” she trilled, a sentiment I should have known not to believe had I been thinking rationally because she’s promised me three tall, handsome strangers in the past five months.
But believe I did, and wrong she was.
Also liars, though far more noble ones, are the nurses who took my blood when I went to donate it last Monday.
I don’t know what it is that makes me buy their age-old spiel (perhaps I think the happy buzz of altruism will act as some kind of local anaesthetic), but when they say I’ll just feel a small scratch, I expect to just feel a small scratch.

Suffice to say (in the words of a verbal reasoning exercise circa year eight) small scratch is to actual experience what Michael Fish’s high winds were to the hurricane of ’87.
After the shrieking and sobbing (me) and laughing and name-calling (nurses) have subsided, I am then left with the awkward task of making conversation through my pain.
Averting my eyes from the pint of red stuff being sucked into a plastic bag disturbingly similar to a Capri-Sun packet, we cover all the appropriate nurse/patient topics… uni, holidays, the weather and such, during which I pour all my energy into suppressing the natural urge to quote Tony Hancock.
At least half a dozen perfect moments for quipping “a pint? That’s nearly an armful!” arise and are quashed, and I am proud to have postponed turning into my father for at least another afternoon.
Meanwhile, my friend Lizbob — real name protected for legal purposes — reclines on the bed next to mine being notably more laid-back (ah, sweet pun) about the process.
This is hardly surprising, as because it is her second time as a donor she has just been awarded a complimentary key ring, and everyone knows the powerful numbing effect that freebies can have on the circulatory system.
I’ve been known to feel faint for days after pocketing a sample sachet of moisturiser. However, this attitude also seems true of Lizbob’s blood, which takes an idle seven minutes to exit her elbow while mine is a speedy three.

This is the only race I’ve ever won, and I feel suitably smug.
“Are there any questions you would like to ask?” says Nice Irish Nurse as she yanks out the needle. I rack my brains for an enquiry that will make me seem intelligent, generous, witty or any of the above.

Unfortunately, no such question exists and so instead I ask: “Those people on the advert with the celebrities…the ones that gave blood and saved the lives of the relatives of people from Corrie…. surely they aren’t the ACTUAL blood donors, are they?”

Nice Irish Nurse assures me that they are indeed actors, and I settle back for my 10-minute lie down satisfied that one of my Big Life Questions has been answered.
Another of my Big Life Questions: “Whatever happened to those Tuc biscuits with the cheese in the middle?”, is answered later when we reach the refreshments table.
Clearly, the NHS has been stockpiling them to entice potential blood donors, a wise move. While I do a celebratory jig around the orange squash dispenser, Lizbob is decidedly less impressed. “I feel a bit faint,” she says, and promptly keels over.

Instantly an army of clucking nurses descend like compassionate vultures, fanning, prodding and temperature-taking in a slightly-too-cheerful manner that suggests they might have been taking bets on which of us would pass out first.

Also amusing is that they seem to think I am genuinely worried — they keep patting my arm and cooing: “She’s going to be fine, she’s going to be fine”.

I, however, am precoccupied with trying to remove the cheesy filling from the Tuc biscuit sandwich in one go as I could in my youth, and have barely noticed that my pal is now horizontal on a stretcher.
Eventually, when Lizbob has been deemed sufficiently sturdy to sit upright and eat shortcake again, and I have worked my way through a year’s back copies of Woman’s Weekly, we leave, pumped full of orange squash and an armful of blood lighter.
But we are now officially Good People — we have stickers that say so.
Yes, I’ve learnt a valuable lesson of late: both nurses and astrologers lie.
But nurses have good cause, and even better biscuits.
Now THAT’S what they should put on the advert.


24/08/06
SORRY MUM, BUT JEALOUSY GOT THE BETTER OF ME
MY mother doesn’t think I should write this article.
She seems to believe that a column inspired entirely by my passionate hatred of Natasha Kaplinsky will do something in the way of damage to my reputation.
She is probably right, as is her statutory mothering right, granted as reward for giving birth to me and never telling me to put more practical shoes on.
She thinks I should write a lovely piece about something lovely, and avoid inviting Kaplinsky fans far and wide to pelt me with stiletto-heeled court shoes in the street.
However, her “I told you so” run hit a rocky patch last week with the discovery that her daughter had managed to pass A-level English without actually reading the book, and thus I’m prepared to take the risk that karma (or possibly the big K herself) will come round to give me a good kicking.
The truth is that my abhorrence of Ms Kaplinsky is almost completely unfounded, based mainly on the fact that she has a terrible haircut.
A terrible haircut alone, of course, is more reason for sympathy and possibly charitable intervention (why Nicky Clarke hasn’t yet set up a foundation, I am still baffled) than a slagging off; but Kaplinsky is a terrible haircut coupled with the unshakeable belief that she is nothing short of a goddess, and it is this smarmy conceit that makes me want to give her a good happy-slapping.

She’s like the girl at school who gets away with wearing trowelled-on make-up while everyone else is sent to the loos with a cleansing wipe.
“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” she purrs, to which I reply: “I don’t. I hate you because you make me nauseous.” I know what you’re thinking – jealousy.
Why, Lauren is clearly jealous of Natasha’s collection of immaculate pastel power suits!
She wishes that she, too, could have facial features sourced from The Aristocrats and cheekbones that could carve a Sunday joint!
Alas no, this is not envy dressed up as an irritation; this is an irritation in its purest form, for which there is no pharmaceutical cream available (I’ve asked in Boots).
Now, Sophia Myles is a different matter. I’ll happily admit that my aversion to her is complete, 100 per cent jealousy, of the greeneyed, thoroughly monstrous, “you’re-going out- with-David-Tennant-and-I’m-sure-he’d- prefer-me” kind.
At least it was until I found out she pronounces her name “Soff-eye-er”, and now I rest assured that I am as justified as she is pretentious.
“You can see us falling in love on screen,” claimed Tennant of their Dr Who rendezvous.
I didn’t David, I was too busy chucking things at it.
And these acidic outbursts are just the tip of the iceberg.
A glacial lump that also includes Carol Vorderman, Fiona Phillips, Fearne Cotton and at least five cast members of Hollyoaks, my collection of celebrity intolerances is extensive, harbouring the power to sink both the Titanic and Celine Dion with one swift blow (she’s also on my list).
I regard it as a healthy exercise for ridding me of the angst that would otherwise be unleashed on my nearest and dearest in a scene reminiscent of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Every minute spent spitting venom at Peaches Geldof is one that spares No2 brother punishment for performing the finale of Cats outside one’s bedroom door at sunrise (not a fictional occurrence, more’s the pity).

Oh, and what venom this is.

My resentment of Peaches is perhaps the strongest and most enduring of all my peeves.
Maybe because she once pronounced David Cameron “hot”, or maybe because my own surname has never procured me an undeserved spot in The Telegraph (though it did get me bullied something rotten for half of year four), there’s just something about the “teenage columnist with opinions on the world” thing that gets right up my nose . . . (irony noted and duly ignored).
As I leave the kitchen and walk upstairs to write this, Mum shouts after me “just remember what Thumper said in Bambi – if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”.
But that would have left you with a blank page, now, wouldn’t it?
And though the Kaplinsky fan base of Worthing may be weeping into the sleeves of their lilac cashmere twinsets, I must admit that I feel a whole lot better.




17/08/06
‘PRETTY MESS': THINK MISS PIGGY AND SPARKLY
SEQUINS
AS part of my ever-continuing quest to become the ultimate low-maintenance woman, I seem to have officially renounced my wardrobe.

Or rather, my wardrobe has renounced me; a six year-old carrier bag collection (the purpose of which I can no longer recall) has joined Forces with an army of discarded footwear (led by Colonel Reebok, a trainer whose purpose I do dimly recall but associate with such pain and self-loathing that I swiftly forget it again) and now I can’t open the door without triggering an avalanche of ill-advised purchases.
Of course, it seems fair to point out that were the inside of my wardrobe a shrine to colour co-ordinated folding perfection such as to make Monica Geller weep with joy, I still wouldn’t be able to open the door.

This is because a pile of boxes is sitting right in front of said wardrobe and has been since I finished using them in my media studies music video project roughly five months ago.
Since then I have placed a pile of large, vaguely arty books (I lie, they’re old Jackie annuals) on top of the boxes in an effort to capture some kind of coffee-tableish vibe, and now they have become a key part of the general design motif along with a community of mugs in varying states of fullness, and the suitcase I never unpacked after Skegness 99.
Of course, most teenagers revel in their slovenliness as a classic means of riling their uptight, Dyson-owning parents.
I don’t, mine is hereditary. NOT (issuing the statutory disclaimer to ensure I don’t wake up tomorrow on my mattress in the street) that my mother is any kind of slattern, and nor would I wish to imply she is.
She is a saintly Cinderella with more than a passing fondness for antibacterial kitchen wipes.
But she is also a woman who lives by the motto ‘dust adds character’, while her husband attached our bathroom tiles with blu-tack, and thus it is hardly surprising their daughter considers a room tidy if she can find space in it somewhere to sleep.
More than learning to live with my mess, I have, over the years spent submerged in my own debris, adopted it as a kind of proud character trait.
Like my dear friend Jo, whose standard reply to any remark on her punctuality is “What, you expected ME to be on time?”, I have come to think of my mess as an extension of self.
And so tidying would be a bit like cutting off a limb, with equal amounts of bloodshed.
Furthermore, I pride myself in cultivating a newmess hybrid, a revolution in mess technology sure to make me a Carol Vorderman-size fortune.
“Tidy mess” you’ve seen; it’s what happens when Auntie Ethel pops round and there’s no time to visit the dump first.
“Pretend mess” you’re also acquainted with, that odd phenomenon whereby anal retentive types scatter magazines in a fan and arrange tiny ethnic boxes with no purpose whatsoever other than to make people think they’re well travelled and interesting.
I have invented “pretty mess.”
The theory of “pretty mess” is simple – just as putting cake, golden syrup, peanut butter and Haagen-Dasz in a blender can only possibly create something devastatingly brilliant, so taking something sequinned, something floral and something Miss Piggy might have worn and throwing them all on your bedroom floor can only possibly create modern art of a really fetching nature…or so goes the theory.
In short, anything aesthetically appealing is in, while anything growing fungi life forms is out (though I’ll accept the odd piece of mossy crockery can add a homey feel if your mess is looking a tad on the prissy side – the choice is yours).
Thinking about it, it would be interesting to apply this theory to other areas of life – is failing your exams acceptable, desirable even, if you fail them all in sparkly turquoise pen?
Here’s to hoping.


10/08/06
RESULTS DAY: JUST SLUICE ME DOWN AND TELL
ME THE WORST
CUE the cartoon anvil, results day is upon us.
When you read this, it will be exactly one week to the day of reckoning.
Exam board officials will be rubbing their hands together with sadistic glee and I will be an indistinguishable puddle of despair somewhere public, being sluiced off the pavement and transferred to the nearest waste disposal receptacle so that innocent pedestrians need not accidentally step in my gloom.
I’ve lost all feeling in my limbs just thinking about it. I’ve also been thinking a lot recently about The Big Breakfast, that late, great feat of programming that married laminated kitchen tablecloths and Chris Evans’s ego with the feigned pretence that Kelly Brook was interested in current affairs.
Not that I am pining for days spent haunted by the fear of Keith Chegwin on one’s doorstep before 9am, you understand, or even harbouring resentment towards my parents for never entering us as Family of the Week (precious exposure that surely would have resulted in my being ‘discovered’ and subsequently given all the jobs Peaches “Yar, war is, like, bad” Geldof has been massacring ever since).
No, I have been thinking solely about that one mid-August morning every year when a gaggle of ashen-faced teenagers would be bullied into sitting round a big pine table eating toast and marmalade as Denise Van Outen revealed their A-level results to the world.
Toast and marmalade that would most likely be regurgitated minutes afterwards in the toilets of Lock Keeper’s Cottage because the poor darling hasn’t got the required grades to study Classics at Bristol, and must instead go into the family keycutting business with their cousin Brian.

Watching as a blissfully ignorant tweenie, when academic appraisal came in the form of smiley stickers and the odd end of term disco, this charade seemed great fun. Now I look back on the memory as Shaun the sheep might regard a doner kebab.
Or, come to think of it, as anyone might regard a doner kebab – with morbid curiosity and a distinct wave of nausea.
How? Why? What, other than large sums of money and the chance to make snide jokes around Richard Bacon, would possess anyone to put themselves through the modern equivalent of public witch-dunking?

Perhaps the appeal was the chance to escape the clutches of fond mamas for a minute or two, a desire I can fully identify with in my current state; so sick am I of hearing people tell me it’ll all be fine that I’m finding myself quite attracted to the idea of coming home with an envelope full of Ds, just to say ‘Ha’*. Escape route from college has been planned in minute detail on that blueprint paper they have in films (effort that, in hindsight, would have been far more effectively employed in revising for the dratted things in the first place), so that in the event of abject failure on the day, all well-meaning friends waving pages of As in my tearful face can be avoided like the bird flu. And thence onward, to acquire a nice bit of body piercing or facial tattoo (“Don’t Ask” across the forehead might be particularly useful) just to confirm I have officially gone off the proverbial rails, in case anyone’s mum might ask.
My friends and I have become wildly superstitious in the way that only students and elderly ladies can be.
Any kind of pre-results preparation for uni is stupid beyond question, just tempting an enormous hand to descend from the clouds, snatch us up and drop us in the doorway of the local jobcentre whilst a voice echoes “OH? Think you’ve PASSED then, do you?”
Which is why the reading list UCL sent several weeks ago is submerged under a pile of dusty Vogues to prevent it creeping out and blighting my entire future.
Even the traditional ‘touching wood’ has evolved into an agitated ritual dance involving the slapping of all tree-descended materials in the vicinity, followed by the heads of those around us and then our own.
The end result is something vaguely like the New Zealand rugby team routine, only steeped in adolescent angst rather than Maori history.
Still, it helps.

Perhaps a nice slice of toast and marmalade would heal the pain…where’s Johnny Vaughan when you need him?

*Please note that the above statement was nothing more than a flippant remark, and any reader who might possibly have access to my results sheet should by no means take it upon themselves to get happy with a Biro.


3/08/06
THAT OLD ARTICLE? OH, IT WAS SOOO 2002...
THE very first article I ever wrote for this esteemed publication, at the tender age of 14, was entitled “Townies v Grunges, the Big Debate”.
And reading it now makes me chuckle no end, not just because of the impressive mountain range my (pre-straighteners) hair is forming in the byline picture, but because of the sheer 2002ishness of it all.
Both terms now seem so archaic they may as well have featured in a nice pre-1900 anecdote – perhaps about the shock caused when Lady Froggington exposed her ankles at Sir Blitherington-Smythe’s annual Gala ball, requiring the resuscitation of the Reverend with some smelling salts.
Though at the time I welcomed “Townies” with about as much enthusiasm as I would do a bout of gastric flu, now I find myself recalling the darlings with noted affection – the market stall handbags, the frequent Trisha appearances, the mistaken belief that McDonald’s doorways are THE place to be seen this season.
Ah, the sheer innocence of it is now just a hazy memory.
For fledgling townies, you understand, did what all species do to ensure the perpetuation of their genes (and in this case, their jeans – thong-bearing and probably from River Island).
They evolved.
Spreading like a whiff of imitation Burberry perfume in a crowded Wetherspoons, a super strain of the townie emerged and took hold of the nation quicker than you can say ASBO.

This time it was about market stall handbags, frequent Trisha appearances, penchant for McNuggets on a Friday night AND the threat that they might kick your head in at the smallest provocation.
You know who I’m talking about.
Go on, we’ll all whisper it in unison, as though we’re talking about the Nazis: Chavs.
But, of course, I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by giving you a laboured account of the ins and outs of chavdom.
It would be several years too late, for one thing, now that the concept has been so distorted and ingrained in the national consciousness by an army of middle-class, middle-aged media hacks that anyone who dares drop a “t” is in danger of being publicly rounded up and flogged, the C-word branded across their foreheads with a red-hot signet ring.
Yes, you know about chavs.
You know about the nice ones, like Mike Skinner.
You know about the not-so-nice ones, like that Jodie Marsh, who exposes a good deal more than her ankles on a night out.
You know about the posh ones, like Prince Harry, and you know about the pretend ones, like Goldie Lookin’ Chain.

No, I don’t need to tell you about chavs (though I am perfectly aware I’ve just spent 400 words doing exactly that, no need to write).
What I’d like to tell you about is chav chic. Which, I promise you, is not an oxymoron.
Despite more hype than that of a space launch surrounding her cheeky self at the moment, I have found the strength in me to like Lily Allen.
To her music I am smugly indifferent, as I tend to be when both The Guardian and my mother tell me I should like someone, but she has earned my respect nonetheless because I’m going through a bling phase.
And she wears lots of it.
With big ballgowns, which happens to be one of my very favourite juxtapositions (don’t tell me you don’t have your own top-10 list of juxtapositions written down somewhere. I just know you do.)
There’s something about layering multiple gold necklaces that gets me quite excited at the moment.
Perhaps it’s the faint feeling of rebellion, after years spent being told that anything other than understated silver or strings of patchouli-scented boho nonsense spell s-i-n in the style stakes.
There’s also something rather thrilling about embracing the odd chavvy feature whilst very clearly not being a chav, a bit like borrowing your friend’s top because you think you look better in it than they do.
Not yet have I been persuaded that those diamond-studded clown pendants look anything other than supremely ridiculous, but my jewellery box is beginning to look like a prop from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Among the piles of treasure is a “Laurie” nameplate necklace and a gilded bracelet so ornate it prompted a friend to remark, “I like that. It looks like something you’ve stolen from the Pope”.
The good news is that thus far I haven’t had the urge to bash in any old ladies in dark alleyways – but then again neither have most chavs.
I’m just rather enjoying being a budget Mr T for a while.
To quote the ultimate in LA chavettes, J-Lo, don’t be fooled by the rocks I’ve got…I’m still Lauren from the block.
And they’re all fake.



13/07/06
IT'S BASIC FRENCH: WHEN IN DOUBT, HAIL LE TAXI...
Lesson 1: Time is of the essence, and caffeine doesn’t always help.
It is uncertain just what makes us think that stopping off at the London Eye to use the loo en route to the Eurostar is a good idea, but the urge to accumulate as many pictures of ourselves with important-looking buildings as possible kicks in before we’ve even crossed the Channel.
So we return to Waterloo half an hour late after a reckless hour spent hauling a small truckload of luggage up and down the South Bank, and swiftly become tourist carnage amid a sea of sturdy Americans in sun visors.
Necessary espresso Frescatos are acquired from Costa (after all, the addition of a sloshy beverage to your hand luggage can only aid the travelling process), but minutes later we discover to our dismay that the icy friends aren’t allowed through the barriers.

“Drink”, instructs Mr Burly Customs Official.
And so we do, avoiding eye contact with the furtive panic of three people who are about to miss their train and blame it on each other.

I don’t know if you’ve ever downed a large frozen coffee in half a minute, but you can imagine how delightful it feels to jog along a few miles of train platform afterwards.
Which is how Lauren, Hannah and Sarah find themselves in seats 42, 43 and 47 with moments to spare and the worst brain-freeze* known to man.
Lesson 2: Mind your language, and perfect your pointing.
We are women of the world.
We have French GCSEs.
We’ve seen Chocolat several times and we know the sentence “excuse-moi, ou est la station de bus?”.
Unfortunately, this is where our linguistic talents stop, and we are quick to discover the main simple flaw with our approach: namely, that if you speak French to them, they are more than likely to speak French back.
Which equates to us spending a large part of each day in a hopeless kind of airtight communication void, some helpful passer-by reeling off a detailed and articulate set of instructions on precisely how to locate the bus stop, perhaps throwing in a nice recipe for coq au vin while they’re at it, only to be greeted by three glazed expressions and a load of apologetic English mumbling. Once extracted from the void (usually through nervous laughter and the offering of a pastry product to heal the breach), we find ourselves falling into an all-too-common Brits-abroad tradition speaking English, only LOUDER and slooooower, as though the kindly recipient is a wayward seven-year-old who needs scolding.
When this fails to charm, we resort to shameful Del Boy-style tactics, such as speaking English in a French accent.
Or made-up French in an English accent.
Or German.
We find ourselves, then, in the mother of all Catch-22 situations.
Speaking Le Français seems to get us up le creek sans le paddle, but heaven forbid we should expose ourselves as ignorant foreigners by expecting locals to respond to “ay up, mate, d’you know where the bus stop, like, is?”. The solution, it transpires, is to regress to a mute state and gesture as if our lives depend on it.
“One of those”. “That hotel please”. “I’m sorry, we didn’t see the sign and will of course pay for the damage”.
Simple.
Lesson 3: Get plastered, but not in the way you might think.
It is day one, and a Hitchcock murder scene is being reconstructed in the hotel bathroom.
A river of blood runs into the plughole, bloodsoaked tissues fill the wastepaper basket, and Lauren runs around shrieking after having hacked out half of her leg with her new Venus Vibrance razor.
Hannah assumes Mum status to administer plasters and soothing noises, and we spare a sympathetic thought for the maid.
Fast-forward several hours, and being the chipper English girls we are, jolly-hockey-sticks spirit has taken over as we decide to walk to Monmartre, climb roughly 12 million steps up to the Sacre Coeur, and perform a fervent Moulin Rouge routine on the pavement.

Unfortunately, the smug feeling of accomplishment produced by such adventure is marred by the fact that Sarah’s feet appear to have died.

More precisely, they have suffered GBH at the hands of her new espadrilles and now refuse to carry her further than the nearest chemist, where we stop to administer more plasters and soothing noises.
Then purchase emergency flip-flops at a French version of Poundstretcher.
As Hannah reminds us, taking her new role as official Mum of the holiday to heart, “comfort is key”.
And thus in the name of practicality, we take taxis for the rest of the week.
Lesson 4: There’s only so much initiative a girl can use.
Day three, and after navigating her way around Paris with complete confidence, visiting the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe, among others, eating approximately seven and a half nice meals and taking enough photos to bore friends and family for a good three hours on our return, Hannah rings England to ask her mother if it is all right to put a stamp in the middle of a postcard because there is no room in the corner.
Hilarity ensues. >

*Brain-freeze, for those of you unacquainted with the term, is that achy effect cold drinks have on your grey matter, treated by excessive eyebrow wiggling and thinking about warm, melty things.


6/07/06
THE RIVE GAUCHE AND A RUCKSACK CALLED RICHARD
I’M supposed to be packing right now, so I hope you're grateful. If you’ve been following this column and if not, why not?) you may remember that I consider myself something of an expert when it comes to putting things off – talking to you, dear reader, provides me with by far the best distraction anyone could want besides death, and so maybe you should be feeling vaguely responsible for contributing to my packing aversion syndrome.
Stuart the Suitcase lies empty on my bedroom floor, patiently awaiting his Promotion from resident of the loft cupboard for discarded luggage items (the L.C.D.L.I. for short, if anyone would like to make a charitable donation for their care and maintenance — we have a 30-year-old rucksack named Richard who is currently in need of a sponsor) to sole guardian of more frocks than could ever conceivably be worn by one person on a five-day trip across the Channel.
Of course, it would be a dramatic break with tradition for me to concede placing anything IN said suitcase at an excessive 20 hours prior to departure, but still the guilt is there.
Let it be noted, however, that where packing is concerned, I make up for in enthusiasm what I lack in organisation (if only the same could be said about A level Psychology).

Under the firm belief that in these situations more is definitely more, I pack in the same way I imagine Elton John shops.
That is, selecting items with no practical function and throwing them together in a fit of whimsy.
And so my suitcase-filling exploits are not governed by what I might actually need to wear/use/have on a Particular holiday, but instead what visionary “concept” I have dreamt up for the week’s ensembles. Like the William Blake of budget style, I can be found pacing around in front of Wendy Wardrobe clutching my temples and muttering “I’m getting sequins, I’m getting Studio 54, I’m getting big, BIG hair and shoes that make my toes bleed”.
Heaven help anyone who reminds me I might need a toothbrush.
We leave for Paris tomorrow, and our concept has been carefully devised: we’re talking part Amélie, part Jane Birkin and just a dash of the one in the trench coat from ’Allo ’Allo.
We’re talking neckscarves tied at jaunty angles and big floppy sun hats.
We’re talking frou-frou dresses inspired by when Carrie went to France in Sex and the City.
We’re talking artfully layered jewellery to glint in the Parisian sunshine, and the barefaced chic of that girl from the Renault Clio ad. Unfortunately, the crux of the matter is that we are only talking, and not DOING.
Which is why I will, most likely, complete the whole process in 15 minutes flat at 6am tomorrow and forget to include any pants.

Oh, to be one of those people who can throw a few carefree nothings into a knapsack and spend a genuinely joyful fortnight wearing the same Fruit of the Loom polo shirt.
How liberated and unburdened their holidays must be, free from the little trials that invariably mar the life of an exuberant packer – trying to iron a dry clean-only shift dress with one’s hair straighteners, for example.
Or realising that the space you gave up to the assorted pairs of snow-boots in case of a freak July blizzard would probably have been more usefully occupied by your passport.
Or spending the week’s food rations on a cab fare just to get Stuart Suitcase, who weighs about the same as a five-year-old, to the hotel in the first place.
Plug adaptors? First Aid kit? Flannel?
No, but I have a replica Roman battle helmet and 12 different kinds of hair grip...
Listen carefully, for I shall say this only once:
Lauren Bravo does not travel light.
But I think Stuart’s up to the challenge.