Kids: much smaller than I remembered.

I wish all my food looked like foliage.

When I was in Berlin back in April, my friend and I spent a couple of hours sitting on a bench opposite a park full of children. Not in a paedophile way, just a coincidence. Anyway, one thing we were really, really taken aback by was quite how small they are.

Sounds logical, I know, but they really are very very small. We had a giggling fit over it (although that may also have something to do with the fact that one of them had a poo under a tree and tried to cover it up with bark a bit like a cat).


Anyway, I'd forgotten about the size of kids, not unsurprisingly as I normally see only students and real adults in my day to day life. However, ever since my aforementioned worthy procrastination led me into my Primary School Teacher Mum's habitat to use my A-Level art skills to create props for the school play, I haven't been able to stop thinking about how small kids are. Again, in a disbelieving curious way, rather than a paedophile way.


Saying that, there is evidence to suggest that my head is smaller than that of a child's. I know this because in an attempt to create a piece of head-gear that would turn a child into a bear, my mum shoved the ankle-end of an age 11 velour brown legging on my head.


(This is something I've got used to after living with a PSTM for a while. The other day I had to put on one of my old bras - which had been stuffed - backwards, to ascertain whether it would be suitable for a 10 year old in drag.)


I got kind of used to the legging. It was quite cosy. I can see why bank robbers etc don't mind putting hosiery over their heads, and the swishing about of the rest of the leg made me feel like a real girl with proper hair.


Anyway, despite its many merits, the legging had to be tried on bear-children. It didn't fit. Now, either the kids have freakishly large heads for their tiny bodies, or I've just got a small head. Didn't really want to investigate either situation - all sounds a bit Victorian-Racist to me.

In other news: look at that mushroom. Isn't that the prettiest mushroom you've ever seen? I cooked it today, but only after stroking it for a little while.

Desert. Dessert.

Well somebody got a lot of egg.

Bowlface takes on fashion blogging. Well, almost. My coolkid friends were 'doing the 90s' a little while back, and, like an old, sceptical woman, I shunned the notion. Although a slavish fan of vintage, I always maintain that you should never return to the fashions you've worn once already.

This is possibly why I struggled with leggings so much. Having spent my 90s childhood in varying patterns of the garment - pocohontas-pattern, Minnie Mouse pattern, butterflies etc etc- I have little desire to return to them. The same applies to denim jackets and crop tops. The former I've decided I've come round to but after weeks of seeing them splashed all over every colour supplement and weekly rag I really just can't go there, such is my innate antipathy to knowingly following a trend. The crop tops I've been digging for over a year, albeit with everything highwaisted. However, after spotting over 17 lace Topshop ones at a recent festival I fear they too may have to bite the dust.

So, here comes the new 90s-esque beast. Judging by Radio 0ne style broadcasts and this month's Vogue, Alexa Chung - long time underground style icon - has been unleashed to the hungry hungry hoards of women desperate for more skinny birds to idolise. I'm one of them, and feebly attempted to imitate her style last summer for about a week until I realised the circumference of each of my thighs was equal to that of her waist and that I couldn't nick that nicely beaten-up breton top off my ex.

The result of this Chunglove is that "battered ankle boots" are the de rigeur footwear for practically everyone, as the extortionate prices of them on ebay demonstrate, especially when 'Alexa' is quoted in the listing. Thus, my clever planning to buy some before autumn descends is quite futile.

However, I have been intrigued by desert boots. As seen on male Shoreditch scenesters etc over the last couple years, I predict a female appreciation fairly soon. There's one small problem: I just can't get over the fact they look like elf boots. I'm not that cutesy kind of girl who can pull that thing off. I just look like an oversized toddler, or Ann off Little Britain.

But then, on ebay, up pops possibly the greatest solution. Canvas desert boots. V 90s, not too elfy, not too converse. Could be perfect, and indeed a repetition of the jazz shoe moment of yonderyear - I wish I stockpiled pairs ever since. Alternatively, it could be horribly wrong. However, for 50p I'm willing to find out.

In other news, my wholesome procrastination has resulted in these little puppies : lemon cupcakes. They're fruit-orientated, not chocolate-orientated, so that means they're well healthy, innit. As a good friend of mine would say, "Lemon zest: one of your five a day".

Procrastination Post

Unlike my last procrastination-related post way back in April, this one has much less self-loathing in it. In fact, my procrastination this morning got me a job. Score!
Since returning to the 'Shire just under a week ago, the disappearance of any necessary chores, to-do lists, social activity, inner-city road systems etc has left me with a state of relaxation which, for a someone with such a short attention span as myself, has left me unbelievably bored.
I'm not easily satisfied with a week of nothing to do unless I'm in a hot/sunny/interesting/beautiful place, and the quiet village of my upbringing does not fit into any of those categories.
As a result, I have undertaken a number of seemingly dull yet wholesome activities such as gaining gym membership, eating brown food, reading foreign novels in cafes (how I got employed this morning), writing stories about my Dad for the local press and going to tabletop sales. I have also made a few Internet discoveries, such as discovering friends' previous modelling careers on youtube, and checking out a band called Discovery.
These people are clearly going to have a load of record sales of the back of the fact that one of them is in Vampire Weekend, which is a shame, as they're really good of their own accord. I give it about six months until you start hearing them in Topshop.

"Stop comparing everything to the O.C"

I can hear Phantom Planet already.

Second dossy weekend, second camping trip. However, unlike the alcohol-fuelled spontaneity of the Withnail adventure, our little jaunt to the Northumbrian coast was led by a true pro of seaside camping, and I subsequently lost my 'OC moment' virginity.
I've never really lived near the coast. Actually, I've never lived anywhere near the coast, so the seaside is still as massive novelty for me, especially that belonging to Blighty. Subsequently, British seaside activities such as beach cricket, tent-pitching and shivering all fill me with glee.
As the camping god was clearly looking down on us kindly, the predicted monsoon held off and there was beautiful sunshine all day, allowing a load of epic photos to be taken which anyone who has subsequently admitted to stalking my facebook has commented on.
From plunging to what I was convinced was a certain death or shin-splintering off the top of a sand dune, to rolling down one, lugging drift wood to make a megafire, cooking more meat than we could ever eat, having deep conversations and watching the sunset, I was filled with the glee of the first-time young person obligatory experience.
Yes, I know I kept comparing it to the O.C, but when you're toasting marshmallows on a campfire and listening to a combination of Imogen Heap and rolling waves, whilst discussing Bob Dylan, could it really be anything else?

"A coward you are, Withnail. An expert on bulls you are not"

I'm a country gal. Having been raised in a small rural village in the 'Shire, I'm not adverse to the smell of manure; I'll happily walk through a field of cattle, without having previously fallen through the grate; and I can recognise the calls of a good few birds.
However, when I joined ten of my friends on an impromptu camping trip in the Lakes, the only thing that differentiated me from Withnail was my appreciation of the fresh mountain air to cure my hangover.
Like Withnail and Danny, of the 1987 film, me and my compatriots couldn't have been more noticeable in the quiet tourist trap of Keswick. After being refused from the desired campsite - despite lying, pretending the cars weren't together and making fake couples up within the group, it was still painfully obvious that we were together. We didn't get further than the gate.
Thus, returning up the mountain to a more remote, even more family-focussed site, we put on our best polite voices, chose the most respectable-looking of our crew and promised not to sit outside the tent drinking and being rowdy. Whoops.
Escaping to the town of Keswick itself was where the fun really happened. Much like when Withnail and Danny went to the local, we stormed the only 'club', The Loft, in Keswick, in DMs and cagoules, abused the staff over the £5 entry fee and proceeded to become the only women in the place. All was going well until one of us sick and we had to flee from the bouncers, as the cinematic pair did from the poacher.
The next day, feeling literally like "a pig has s*** in my head", we ran into Booths, the Lake District equivalent of Waitrose, and shakily munched a hangover lunch (breakfast had stopped being served at 11.30)amongst the civilised grandmother population.
The town centre itself wasn't so far removed. Our scruffy excuses for outdoor wear were shunned amidst a mass of Peter Storm clad grown-ups, leaving us to return, soggily, to the tent to disembark.
I personally was too ashamed to stay another night, but some did, claiming they couldn't resist the lure of The Loft. Should I ever return, in later life, in a Peter Storm jacket, to Keswick, hopefully a similar antithapy to 'young people' will remain.

'There's nothing more cringeworthy than seeing white girls try and dance to drum and bass'

Unfortunately, very, very true. And yet, something quite integral to my life.

Having spent the majority of last weekend 'trying' to dance to drum and bass (I thought I'd actually got it nailed until told by a much cooler black man that I was just another middle-class white girl trying to escape my rural, naive upbringing and only making it all the more evident)in a crowd of other trying middle class white kids I had an epiphany that no-one is ever very cool. Ever.

The student population of Newcastle believes it brings cool to the north through a love of unpronounceable DJ's and artists, toting around the latest day-glo headband and talking about drugs a lot. I'm not in denial of it, but merely a sad state of realisation that we're all just pretending.

Even as I gazed over at a public school alumnus, making gun shots in the air with her hands, saucer-pupils not really hidden by her wayfarers, and thought 'I bet her father would have a heart attack if he saw that', my own heart was palpitating at a similar rate out of fear that I probably looked the same.

Something happened last night which really put a level of perspective on the whole white-kid drum-and-bass thing. Sitting on an Ikea fold-down chair, brought out for visitors when the red chenille sofas were occupied, in an immaculately clean student living room, playing a drinking game with my g&t, and surrounded by people singing along to Pendulum, it became very apparent that the answer to the question, 'it's drum and bass! What you gunna do?' was very much enclosing me.

You can take the girl out of the 'Shire, but you can't take the 'Shire out of the girl.

boredom blog.

My my, if a good three weeks haven't passed in a blur of tedious exams and I've not updated this little puppy...

Aside from the other little assessment-shaped things getting in the way, my life in the library has also been far too bleak a one to comment on to any great extent. However, spending such prolonged periods of time in one place does alert one to the oddities of library ettiquette.

Firstly, there's the German-cliche-esque reservation of desks. People choose their least valuable item of revision equipment to mark their ground at some frightful hour of the morning before heading off to Starbucks, only to return later in the day. Outrageous, I know, but as it is impossible to beat this ever-increasing trend, I too became a desk-hogger. Didn't have enough balls to leave it for too long though. After a seriously paranoid 45 minute run to co-op and back on a Mullerrice mission I swore never to leave my annotated vintage editions of Virginia Woolf texts ever again.

Secondly, there is the total disregard of the silent rules in the silent zone (yeah yeah, the whole library's meant to be silent, it totally isn't). People arrive in packs to sit together there, where the desks are physically walled off to prevent any kind of social contact. It makes no sense, but again, library cowardice caved when I considered telling them to shut up. The age-old dirty look came out instead, which had no impact other than aging me about thirty years. Good times.

Other observations include the transformation of the toilets into tiny boxes where everyone is on their mobiles, frantically shouting over the flushing and hand-dryer noises, the attempts by those who observe the silent rules to eat crisps quietly, and the not-so-sneaky watching of BBC i-player on laptops.

Yeah, looking back, the library really is the dullest place on earth.