100th POST: ZOOTIME

ZOOTIME is the prog-rock effort of The Mystery Jets on their debut album Making Dens. As well as being a piece of useless mid-noughties indie trivia, ZOOTIME is also what I dubbed today's activities. Namely, going to Whipsnade Zoo with my parents for a full day-off childhood reversion and, as a result, Bowlface's 100th post.

Along with the moral and psychological crises that arise with seeing potentially damaged animals in enclosures that are clearly disproportionate to their native habitats, I underwent the natural glee, severe excitement and obligatory fanciful conversations that animals are clearly incapable of which accompany any good zoo trip. Well, any acceptable zoo trip at least - the previous one, to Belgrade Zoo, just brought mild amusement and increasing misery at witnessing the bizarre co habitations of animals that definitely were not designed to know one another.

First discovery of the day was that of a Mara, whose anonymity in the animal world is so great that when you googleimage it, the ratio of photos of the animal to photos of varying scantily clad women is 2 : 9,630,000. Here it is though:

As you may well observe, this is, as Daddy Bowlface exclaimed, a FREAK DEER. Identified as a wallaby and a muntjac before this clearly correct definition, Maras are dead cute and skipped around all over the place. I took a much better photo than this (especially of its bemusing white behind), so sit tight. After a cementing of childhood reversion by falling over and grazing my knee whilst witnessing a naughty sea lion during a rehearsal (total diva), a few more zoological discoveries were made:
- Rhinos like pedicures and enjoy eating floor-Sudocrem as an after-banana treat.
- Red Pandas are basically the Cheshire Cat.
- Dwarf Crocodiles look cuddly.
- Sloth Bears enjoy cardboard boxes.
- Wolverines are the ultimate ANIMAL FAIL.

This last discovery requires deeper analysis. Yes, Wolverine, the animal immortalised in cartoon and pop culture throughout the centuries for long claws, a ferocious attitude and fearsome teeth is a zoological WolverFAIL. Rather than a hefty king of mutant dogs, the Wolverine is actually the king of the weasels. Arguably, in Wind and The Willows, being King of the Weasels was a pretty big deal - but that's a kid's book, the ferocity levels are set at about 3.2. Instead, Whipsnade's Wolverine was a shy, fluffy little thing that refused to come out from under a tree. It wasn't even cute. In fact, I could have chucked a bit of fur fabric on a bush and more people would be interested. I would suggest that Mr. WolverFAIL changed his name to one of the others he goes by, but even 'glutton' sounds a bit too cool.

Even with the WolverFAIL, Whipsnade rocked. What rocked on an equal value was a sibling inbox treat with the subject heading of: BAKE OFFFFF. Yes, Mary Berry and her Great British Bake Off is spreading faster than a viral youtube vid. So far I'm averaging three baking-method conversations a day and, even more exciting, plans are afoot to get a Bowlface team in the bake off to show them how high a scone really should be...
  

Bake Blog

Yeeoush. Long gap from the last written post. During which, however, I have been slaving to high end retail (it almost goes without saying), involved in certain freelancing activities, maniacally making lists (to-do, reading, shopping...all of which constitute my deceptively literary-looking moleskine) and even jetting abroad.

How best to sum up the last 22 days? Well, to be quite honest, it's a task as threateningly dull as its results would be to read. So, here are my highlights:

Discovering Gary Hume has collaborated with Marni (granted, this broke a while back amongst fashion circles, but the Shire is somewhat distracting in getting news hot off the press)

Compiling a mental 'irony playlist' out of the multitude of retro CDs at work. Tracklisting includes Queen's 'I Want To Break Free', Belinda Carlisle's 'Heaven Is A Place On Earth' and Roy Orbison's 'I Drove All Night (to avoid Bicester Village)'.

Watching films with androgynous heroines and their desirable boyish costume wardrobes, e.g., Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted, Dianne Keaton in Annie Hall, furthered by amazing styling like this.

Plus munching amazing Malaysian-Thai hybrid food in the open windowseat of Makan London whilst people watching at Portobello Market; taking photos of dogs in Turkey and, most recently, getting hooked into a programme called 'The Great British Bake Off'. Anything where grown, overweight men cry over a sunken sponge whilst announcing they're a 'pastry and pies kinda guy', which incites conversations between Mummy Bowlface and I about the consistency of a sponge mixture and, best of all, involves the narrator saying 'classic ganache' the same way Jeremy Clarkson would announce 'six cylinder engine' knocks Dave Lamb right off my culinary TV top five. Furthermore, the genius assessing the quality of the cakes is no other than the ULTIMATE CAKE LADY herself, Mary Berry.

To celebrate this TV hour of cake-dedicated national pride, and a relevant holiday snapshot, here is Daddy Bowlface sporting a cake moustache. Bon Appetit.

G is for Gaga and Grandparents

Went on a Shire road trip to visit Grandpa Bowlface today. He's 92, lives in an unwittingly amazing house decked out in enough kitsch and vintage furnishing and wallpaper to stock most overpriced Shoreditch interior design stores for several decades, and takes me out to lunch to places where they paint 'CONGRATULATIONS' and flowers on a plate with free fudge for 'graduating' (which I haven't officially done yet, but what kind of weirdo turns down free fudge?) We drank Earl Grey, ate a load of cake and talked a lot about birds and converting to Judaism. It was the best.

As if my day off couldn't improve much, I come home to find THIS little bloggy nugget on twitter.

Yes gents, contrary to model rumour, this is Telephone-head Lady Gaga herself rocking the androgynous look. Two of my favourite things coming together in a beautiful slightly-Prince-esque way. For, nearly exactly a year after that ridiculous hermaphrodite Glastonbury motorbike scan(man)dal, Gaga has now shown exactly what her lady (gaga) bits look like in the Telephone video and demonstrated that so girly is she that she can even be a man. I've always backed the 'Gaga's a Man!'-dle, in that, hell, if she was a bloke, she was doing a bloody good job of being a lady. 

This piece of styling genius is down to Nicola Formichetti, internationally renowned stylist who I can pathetically name-drop after working the desk at Dazed and Confused during an internship. It took me at least two hours to work out how to put through calls from important types from the likes of Prada and Giles, always asking for 'Nicola' on strict first name terms. Shouty, continental fashion types are scary at the best of times, let alone when they keep being accidentally hung up on. 

Moving on, needless to say I am seriously considering getting a subscription to Vogue Hommes Japan now. Granted, I won't understand much of the text, and I'm not a Japanese man, but who knows which celeb may come under the androgyny treatment next?   

HOT AND JONZEY

Good god, it is HOT. Not that seductive, slightly perspiring holiday kind of hot but the too-muggy-to-wear sweatpants (ironic, given the name), doing chicken-dance to fan armpit kind of hot. Especially when I'm blogging on the ancient parental PC which is radiating heat as it struggles to open more than four tabs on any one browser.

What's both cooling me down slightly and encouraging me to stay on this retro noughties beast of an electronic engine is the latest offering from The Creators Project, involving Bowlface favourite Spike Jonze. Even before we get to the vagueries of this man having been the inspiration behind Yeah Yeah Yeahs' indie ballad of dreams Maps, he's also responsible for cult film classics such as Being John Malcovitch, Adaption, and all the best music videos. I spent most of my Contemporary American Fiction seminars arguing with my tutor about why his adaption of Where The Wild Things Are is actually incredibly great and not ludicrously tedious and seeing as I am, of yesterday, officially First Class at English Literature (had to sneak that in somewhere), it's got to stand for something, as The Creators Project now recognises. Excellent.

Here's the vid. I've got to go and take a cold shower.

PAXWATCH

Ironically, since ending my academic career by handing in a pathetically small pile of footnote-enhanced pages ten days ago, I've been pretty slow on the Bowlface front. In order to mask the pain caused by departing the warm, cosy cradle of education and its red-brick institutions, I've been treating Newcastle like a tourist resort; gallivanting around on my beloved cycle Joan for afternoon rendezvouses and working insane hours as a catering monkey at its 'premier music venue', the SageGateshead.

However, over the last couple of days my life has become considerably more structured and I'm back on the career bandwagon. In the form of an ever-so-slightly nepotism-gained placement in the BBC News Education and Social Affairs unit. I know, grown-up, right? What with the past 48hours also being major movers and shakers of Governmental educational reform, I've been treated to standing as unobtrusively as possible in various terrifyingly-pressured broadcasting environments. Every now and then, like right now, I'm returned to the dark, quiet corner that all interns are supposed to belong in for blog and facebook-update purposes.

Although all the sneaky tagging-along on filming, editing and producing has been awesome, and watching the 1 o'clock news go out from the gallery (so many screens and buttons and countdowns I felt ever caught between an epileptic fit and thinking about what Twitter must look like to my Mum)was the stuff of filmic legend, I've not been cool enough to suppress my excitement about how many media slebs are contained within this very building. I'm literally ten metres away from the Newsnight desk, however, despite being promised Paxman, THERE HAS BEEN NO PAXMAN. Although PAXWATCH is constantly occupying my mind from this particular intern-location, it's not been all bad as I did bump into a couple of glossy female newsreaders when attempting to find the loo.

In the meantime, I'm researching, which occasionally involves talking to the politest of Swedish press reps from a radical, and google-unfriendly, free schools organisation and trying to work out who leaked the Queen's speech at the weekend. Not been tempted to pop across the road to Westfield Shopping centre one bit.

I Heart Grammar

for any myopic readers the caption says 'my cat likes it when you pull on it'[incriminating apostrophe]s whiskers

I appreciate it's bizarrely early on a Sunday morning to be blogging, however, this is pure, unadulterated evidence of the strange turn my life has taken in the last three weeks.

Side affects of academia include:
- waking up minutes before the un-student alarm time of 7.30am goes off
- becoming blogging-dependent

A combination of these things results in early Sunday blogs. I've always been a morning person (a phrase that has an incredibly loud sub-text of 'BEING UNCOOL'; however a recent admission by a member of my facebook community, posted at around 6am, brought all of us out of the woodwork and now I'm safe in the comfort I'm not the only one), however, the guilt/need that comes with the assessment period requires near-imminent work-starting after waking.

I had two revelations yesterday which have affected this somewhat:
- working in the library with a group of friends transforms it from the fear-ridden brown 70s hell hole into a light and near-'fun' communal working experience.
- Mozilla FireFox has changed my life.

The latter isn't quite so relevant. However, this new 'library love', arriving six days before I hand in 18,000 words and say cheerio to BA academia, has stopped me from falling out of bed and into the publications of Palaniuk, Rushdie and Brennan; as I've got a fun 'communal working experience' waiting for me a couple of hours down the line.

I can't, however, quite kick the habit. Hence the need to post really very drivelly blogs on a Sunday morning instead of:
- rolling around in bed
- making pancakes
- getting quietly angry at T4 presenters.

In other slightly more interesting news, another discovery I made yesterday is that there is a lady called Joan who emails Radio 4 every time they make a grammatical mistake. The presenters on the Today Show were being fairly rude about her, and although all the deep science of grammar she used to explain their discrepancies did go somewhat over my head. However, my heart still skipped a beat: as a modern-day pedant, such dedication to grammatical correctness is nothing but a brave if admittedly futile martyrdom to the cause. Furthermore, that Joan shares the name of my beloved bike is even more exciting. My English teacher (still stuck in the fifties and used to give us regular tests in the subject) would have been proud. Or maybe it is her...under a pseudonym...

Hearing from another grammatically-inspired soul I started searching www.threadless.com, a tee shirt website that some of my boy mates are religiously devoted to, for grammatical tee shirts. Admittedly a dodgy strategy, after I was deeply disappointed for a good two days after a Thesaurus-Dictionary cartoon number was sold out. However, what this search led me to was a whole cyber world of other young grammar pedants relishing in the world of geekily amusing tee shirts and critiquing the cute, but grammatically incorrect ones. The comments produced on the above design are numerous, but I think this beautifully concise one sums it up: 'I like design, I dislike grammar issues'.

My lecturer has a better blog than me

I can only dream of the day people will send photos like this into Bowlface

Not highly surprising, as Bowlface is, unfortunately, only updated weekly at the moment. However, it's more the nature of the blog, and indeed, that of the lecturer behind it that makes it so totally awesome.

Last weekend, whilst outstaying our welcome at the pub, myself and a couple of literary mates had a bit of real-ale induced confession time. That confession being that, yes, we loved to try and work out what our lecturers did in their spare time; that we got small thrills from seeing family portraits when let into their offices on the premise of 'borrowing a book', and furthermore, these tutor-crushes had, in some cases, resulted in guilty googling.

This is not all bad though, as some lecturers are clearly made to be googled. Take, for example, Kate Davies. Although not a personal lecturer-fave (she terrified and inspired me in first year in equal amounts after shouting at people for talking whilst sporting Heidi-braids), the dedication of her blog, needled, to knitting, walking, and things that she'd like to take onto Radio 4's equivalent of show-and-tell gives her about a gazillion cool points. I can understand why my Davies-fan buddies got so excited upon discovering it.

Anyway, needled puts Bowlface to shame, and rightly so. There are daily updates informed, but not self-indulgent, musings, and an evident international fan base in the thousands. Hardly surprising considering this fan base is delighted with knitting patterns and knitting pattern-related competitions. Under the cryptic title of 'parliament', a whole other world of non-academic Kate Davies fans can be entered. In which a competition for the best woolly recreation of Kate Davies-created o w l jumper pattern resulted in a parliament of o w l s. Amazing is not the word.

Anyway, writing about Kate Davies' blog is like dancing about architecture, or something. Just check it out. And then send me an o w l jumper, that would be nice. I can't knit.

Only fictional people can make my day better

adidas couldn't have asked for better product placement

Nobody likes to hear how you've had a crap day. Especially when the things that make it crap aren't really that big a deal. For example, sitting in the office of your student newspaper for too long, or the said office being full of hungover screaming people indulging in in-jokes that aren't you; or a five o'clock lecture on American identity, or the fact that two creme eggs eaten in quick succession can't improve matters much.


Whiney whiney yawn. However, the result of all these minor tragedies is that I can justify some self-indulgent onesie-wearing, milka-eating, and 'treat blogging'. What's even better than this magically restorative trio is the fact I have something totally amazing to blog about. That something is the fictional person Sue Sylvester.


Ever since I discovered Glee a few weeks ago, my Monday nights have been transformed. Sure, the cheesy harmonic covers and 'mash-ups' of pop songs are good, the High School setting intriguing and the outfits of neurotic staff highly desirable. But the real glee behind glee is the one-woman, one-liner behemoth that is P.E teacher and leader of the Cheerios, Sue Sylvester. Since seeing her vulnerable side after an alcoholic anchorman rejected her (in a ZOOT SUIT, no less) swing dancing ways last night, I think I love her a little more.


Not since I was seven and wanted Dick King-Smith's horse-riding, farm-loving Sophie of Sophie is Seven fame have I longed so much for a fictional person to appear in my real life. Actually, that's a bit of a lie; when I was fourteen I would've given the majority of my intellect for The OC's Seth Cohen to take me out on a California boardwalk so we could talk about the merits of Ben Folds. Once again, I have fictional-people-I-wish-were-real cravings. Ironic, really, as when P.E teachers were real and highly terrifying creatures in my life I would have done practically anything to avoid them.


What has really kick started this insatiable longing is finding Sue Sylvester's fan page on facebook. Like all good phenomena, her fan page is regularly updated, and, furthermore, in a manner that is suggestive of her real-life existence.


Now I don't have to wait for a whole week to establish how Sue C's it, I can simply sit on this page, day or night, and learn her opinions on all sorts of matters. Like, for example, on Valentine's Day she announces that "all these Internet dating sites are LOUSY with fatties, not that I've been looking". On 4th January we learn that "by sheer force of will, I've managed not to move my bowels in over a week". Stati like that just don't come with real people. Plus I'm one of 140, 331 Sylvester fans. Should I start making an icon of her, that's when people can get worried.

Noam. Like Gnome but with a far more logical name.

Best photo I've seen all day.

Contrary to what these posts may suggest, I'm actually a pretty busy person. This results in a seriously uncool hourly structuring of my daily activities, despite only spending six hours a week in official university stuff.


Anyway, what this results in are minor celebrations when something I thought I had to do doesn't happen. Like, for example, the realisation I could register for the dentist over the phone, whilst checking my Facebook, rather than cycling a couple miles and filling in some forms. Lush.


The subsequent celebration of this extra hour and a half of my life has resulted in some voluntary self-education. It's something I've become especially keen on in 2010. Radio 4 is constantly muttering out of my battery-powered Roberts (it doesn't really do music any justice), and I pick up a newspaper most days, even if the sport section remains on the coffee table for the next week.


Therefore, when I heard about VBS's interview with Noam Chomsky, I got pretty mega-excited. Not least because he went from my mind's peripheral knowledge - I'd maybe be able to shove him in, not necessarily in the right place, in a pub quiz - to the central stuff a few days ago. Yes, Noam Chomsky is up there with Marmite, vintage floral denim and pumping up my bike tyres. A couple of linguistics kids were chatting about Chomsky, comparing him to the Einstein of the field, and then I found out that the guy who was the degree programme coordinator in my School of English and titles emails with 'BOLLOCKS, BOLLOCKS, BOLLOCKS' was his pupil at Harvard. That brings us a couple degrees of separation closer, anyway.


This is the interview, anyway, and it's really good. Get self-educating.

Glee: 1, Revision, Nil.

Wanted to get an Oncomouse in there but it totally wasn't working.

The snow's gone, turned into rain and looks thoroughly miserable, seen out by two little snow bunnies keeping me entertained as I gazed out of the library window when I was meant to be learning quotations.

The snow bunnies were also a pretty indicative sign that I should leave the brown brick construction of pressure that is the Robinson library, not least because I'd been whispering very loudly about them to my friend on the next desk. In the Silent Zone. Where I normally glare at people for doing the same. I would hate myself for hypocrisy, but c'mon, SNOW BUNNIES.

Anyway, when I got home the long-lost flatmate had returned. And I'd received an amazing home-adapted real ale box of Mummy Bowlface baked delights. 'Smushing' on the flatmate's bed with chocolate fudge slice and a catchup was completely essential. Then it was tea time, then it was attempted revision/irrelevant research time (I know what an Oncomouse is now) then it was what I'd been waiting for for three weeks: Glee time.

This programme has been as heavily trailed as 90210 and How I Met Your Mother, which isn't saying much (actually, I've got a bit addicted to 90210's second series). However, it had all the components for being really great. I could tell from the advert:

High School teen cliches, check.
Musical theatre inclusions, check.
Unfeasibly attractive teachers, check.
Unfeasibly witty American jokes, check.

I was totally not disappointed. From the crazy wife of attractive teacher (am I just getting old or were teachers never that hot in school?) and her 'craft room' and hysterical pregnancy, the cute ginge with OCD and fun leaflets on bulimia, and the soundtrack entirely created by kitsch choral interventions, rather than ruining Interpol or Patrick Wolf or someone who really doesn't want their fans to know they've sold out, all makes for a new reason to drink less. As in a Monday night going out tradition, rather than a dependency I don't have on alcohol.

Anyway, Glee is so, well, gleeful, that I've even commented on the Guardian website about it, as well as updating you lovely Bowlface followers. The fact I've got an exam in under two hours has obviously nothing to do with it.

"Aye! We've cracked it!": Pretending to be in 'The Italian Job' with a taxi driver.

You'd be amazed how much studenty crap you can fit in the back of that thing.

Granted, this is a continuation on the ‘fun things that happen during transportation’ theme of recent posts. Possibly a reflection on the sad state of my life / sense of humour, but such are the affairs of bowlface.
So I had to get a cab, sober, in the middle of the day. A fairly rare experience as it goes, as Newcastle is a tiny place and I’m in a serious relationship with my bike. However, this was made practically into a memory for life due to the driver.
Didn’t quite catch his name, but he’d been in service 38 years, had a light gold Merc. with cream leather interior and was a king of taxicab travel. Today he too was presented with a lifelong experience, I’d like to think, in the form of a military parade.
Horses, police, tanks, soldiers and nationalists a go-go were occupying and lining the streets of Newcastle, with buses, cabs and cars getting progressively slower and closer together. It was gridlock, and I had a bus to catch in ten minutes. It was also the closest thing I’ve come to a real-life car chase. Yes.
Mr Taxi Man was also the Geordiest person I’ve ever come across, with the exception of the weird locksmith who merely grunted, chuckled and probably made inappropriate jokes about keyholes – all I could identify was “stairs”. When he saw the gridlock he treated it as a mission of mega proportions. I’ve never heard the word “gan” more often whilst he provided me with a brilliant running commentary of his Police-avoiding and bus-deceiving plans. As the fifteen minute journey continued he got increasing more animated, called a policeman ‘son’ and swore repeatedly at the poor souls who had tried to take a shortcut and got even more backed up. There were a few evil chuckles too.
By the time we were nearing the bus station he was totally, utterly triumphant because we had ‘cracked it!’. “Over The Moon”, apparently, which was certified by a happy little whistle. I reckon he was temporarily the taxi driver equivalent of Knight Rider in his mind.

Bog off Gok, I've got a style adviser with much better facial hair.

My mystery stylist wouldn't call me "curvalicious", he'd tell me to put down the Greggs.

I'm a thoroughly independent shopper. This is due to a few good reasons. One, I normally pick stuff out that looks a lot better on, adapted or with a particular outfit. It's all about seeing potential where most people see dead people's hand-me-downs. Amongst the wrong crowd, this normally encourages such looks of disgust or terror that shopping becomes hugely destructive of any self-confidence. I'm better off checking the size of my arse in a mirror, sneaking the contents of the bag into the wardrobe without being seen and then whipping them out on a suitable occasion to applause.

Coming back to impress my lovable, but mainstream, fresher flatmates a couple years back with some early 90s stonewashed jeans, a pair of loafers and some jazz shoes after a successful charity shop raid, their looks of sheer horror deflated my retail buzz quicker than a chilled out puffer fish.

Number Two, such choices in attire invariably originate from stinky, messy jumbleholes. You need a certain stamina to put up with that. Any laggers get left behind.
Number Three, on the other hand, I get very sweaty in busy high street stores and waiting around for people in changing rooms nearly always ends in dehydration.
This is a shortened version of the list. Ultimately, I rarely rely on others to aid in style choices. Which probably explains a lot, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

However, something funny happened the other night which really changed my mind on the whole affair. Chatting in the pub to a friend regarding my current indecision as to whether I should get my hair coloured in an extreme fashion or not, a small, but vital, interruption occurred.

An elderly Geordie chap - whose existence I wasn't even aware of prior to his contribution - cut me off halfway, announcing "ee leave yer hair alone, like." He went on to explain how I had a very "natral" look about me, and that my current mousy brown shouldn't be messed about with.
I've taken his advice.
Because really, maybe small old men are the way forward in the style stakes. Not understanding current trends, but the vital essentials of fashion - as in, what looks nice - makes for a pretty useful guide. I feel like hiring him to sit in my living room as I proceed to show him every item in my wardrobe to a show of cards judging wearability. A bit like Come Dine With Me.
He wouldn't do a Gok and shove me in a maxi dress, whilst rubbing his head in my boobs and giving me an over sized handbag.

You Lose, X-Factor!

Like Fame, but so much cuter.

So, I did a recent interview with amazing pop band of 2009, Passion Pit, and they enlightened me on so much more than what goes down on the tour bus.

There's this children's choir in Staten Island who are totally incredible. And really addictive. (And appear on Passion Pit's latest album, Manners) I've got about a million things to do right now and yet I'm just sat here, listening to the PS22 chorus on YouTube and blogging about them, enraptured. It's crazy.

Basically, they're all about ten, epitomise just how fun it is to be a kid and cover incredibly brilliant songs.

But they're totally loving it. Lady Gaga's 'Just Dance' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0FPZolbYns&feature=related) is completely eradicated of rubber leotard smut and the fact it's about getting thoroughly inebriated because of the cute dance moves by the two soloists and the slightly chubby kid at the back going mental with pure pleasure.

Then they switch to Bjork, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKPC-T3jjRg) and are clearly as touched by the music to the extent they're squishing their little faces up with joy. It's so unpretentious, there's no X-Factor snob stories, a few handmade matching tee shirts and I really want to be part of it. Hell, they even made Tori Amos's botoxed face shed tears. Now that's power.

Seriously, PS22 are my new favourite band. Regina Spektor, Beyonce, Coldplay, The Cure, even a Christmas version of Destiny's Child's 'Independent Women' - "Throw those presents at me!" They're the aural equivalent of Prozac.

Mugging Cake Ladies

There's the glorified Shire dream.

My sister and I have always had this vision for when we're old and spinstery. Instead of going slowly round-the-bend alone, we'll live in a little house, have a couple of lapdogs to coo over and make and eat an incredible amount of cake. From that point on, we will decline slowly and happily into obese insanity and scare the local children. Kind of like the Gingerbread lady of Hansel and Gretl fame, but without paedophilia and cannibalism, natch.

The stimulus behind this quite possibly lies in Mary Berry. 50's celebrity cook supreme, and writer of the best baking Bibles on which the Bowlface home is founded on. I swear I was weaned the day I discovered there was a bowl to lick.

Much to my hysterical delight, local Shire town Winslow decided to open its newly debuted Farmers' Market with the cake goddess herself. Upon hearing this news in the Shire rag, the date was firmly marked on the Bowlface calendar and we were going to meet our cakey idol, goddammit.

It seemed few other people shared my excitement. In fact, I had to explain to practically everyone just WHO Mary Berry was. However, come Sunday morning, the gathering crowds implied just one thing: the Shire was hot for celebrity, and it came elderly-shaped.

That's some serious ribbon-cutting action right there.

There were about 300 people there, at 10.30am on a Sunday, which pretty much sums up the priorities of Shire folk. People hadn't come so much to buy overpriced offal as to gawp at all the other locals, have a gossip, take numerous increasingly-trodden-on dogs out and, the wee 5% that were left, to get some celebrity chef action.

She was literally one of the cutest things I've ever seen. My mum liked her jacket, but a tiny 5'1'' vision in pink was only slightly disappointing in comparisons to my hoping she would have baked her own clothes. After holding a clearly nerve wracking speech about EC funding (to great cheers of 'hear hear' - I can't believe that even happens outside of costume dramas) and pigs etc, we got down to the nitty gritty and pounced on that cake lady.

I'm not that kid with the eyepatch, by the way. She was my competition.

It was amazing. She congratulated my mum on covering her cookbooks in plastic, signed them with 'best wishes' (although not 'love', which someone else got...we'll gloss over that), and left a whole lot of joy in my heart that even cake can't reach.