Cromer key

Hello everyone,

I have become one of those people who isn't happy unless they have seventy eight projects on he go at all time. I think it's because I had of of those particularly instructive debilitating illness throughout my early to mid twenties where the most strenuous thing I cold do each day was snake my way down the stairs and fall into a pathetic pile on the sofa.

Like this, less hair, asphalt.

The fallout of this and the long recovery period that followed means that I want to DO EVERYTHING. Household mess reminds me of illness and must be irradicated, long leisurely downtime is tantamount to WASTING MY TIME. I wanted to be an artist who can support themselves - how was watching 6 hours of TV a day(as I had always done) going to do that? And lastly, and because, throughout my whole life, I've had a monstrous sweet tooth which was married to a drastically reduced amount of movement, I really got quite chubby - a good 20 pounds overweight. Once I became well enough to hold down a job and a boyfriend, my God, with the fire of a thousand suns, THE FLAB HAD TO GO.

Have you noticed the language creeping up to the apocalyptic? Yeah, it was getting to that level of intensity. I tried the classic, Qwick-Fix No-Carb diet, lost about a stone, came off it and immediately became enormous again. I also became the sugar-crazed diet bore that I had always despised. Good show, Wigmore. That's some primo mental health behaviour. I'm sure my boyfriend and friends enjoyed this delightful excursion into this most ubiquitous of sitcom lady cliches. I'm sure I was quite the delight.

Anyway, and boringly, I got quite a bit saner, lost 2 stone through slightly saner methods (diet and exercise underpinned by an intense pseudo-lesbian crush on Jillian Michaels) and I felt like the time had come to reward myself. I purchased these amazing Stella McCartney jeans for £6 on ebay. The seller was the victim of a classic mid-day listing which meant nobody could impulse snap them up and I got them for a song.

These were to be my fancy pants. The skinny jeans that announced my arrival as a slim, trim SUCCESS MACHINE. Plus, they had little metal tassels on the zips, like a classy stripper! Size 30 waist? Please. I could fit in that and with room to spare. Bring them to me, McCartney. I will shimmy in the manner of Beyonce.

This is why you always list hip measurements, blogosphere. They arrived in the post, I squealed with joy and ran downstairs to my basement bedroom to slip into them. You'll notice they're fully lined with cotton, in the pure white luxuriant thickness of a strait jacket:

This proved to be a startingly apt metaphor. The slopey white mounds of flesh poured from the jeans, as I leapt round the room like the hospital's latest inmate, clawing pulling at the zip that would go no further, screeching at housemate and boyfriend: waist 30! waist 30! They. Will. Do. Up.

Of course they wouldn't - hips don't lie. Shakira is entirely correct on this, those less so about that She-Wolf thing. The hips were 34" and in no way, in my wildest weight-loss/obsessive high achiever dreams, would I shrink to that size. After months of trying, I had failed, blogosphere.

Except not. Actually. That is mental high-achiever obsessive logic. And although I am still 44% mental, I think it's as well to reduce that shit down along with the personal possession thing. I'm not going to slim down to fit the trousers. I'm reselling them to some other person who's as in need of awesome stripper tassels as I was. I'm doing okay. I'm doing my art thing. I made a Jimmy Stewart robot in my image. I'm getting gigs. I'm getting there.

Jimmy Stewart stripped down in his undies

The thing is, blogosphere, you can't do everything. Even if Jillian Michaels' beautiful hazel eyes and foul sailor's mouth say otherwise. I'm using the proceeds of this month's ebay bonanza to fund a holiday to Cromer with my boyfriend at the end of this month. It's just 4 days and Cromer is only a thirty minute drive from home, but it's by the seaside and, dammit - it's where the poppies grow:

Sometimes, relaxing - just a little, just a mite - is not a waste of my time. UNCLENCH.

Your pal,
Becky

Wanna buy my fancy pants? Click here

Urges: Vintage Ghost

Hello teeny tiny readership,

I had a weak moment. I blame early to mid-90s Vogue.

Let me explain. I have something of a fetish for magazines, especially the aforementioned V-word. I have a decade's worth of subscriber issues and plenty of back issues bought off the internet for, frankly extortionate prices. I have a particular love for the Vogues of the era where I started high school - everybody was unusually clean.

Don't ask me, it was a well-scrubbed era of fashion. There was minimal make-up, slicked back hair...all the models looked, how can I put this? Significantly less skagged out is probably the least elegant and most accurate way of describing the phenomenon. It was the era of toothy grins, elaborate fringes and a whole lotta pastels.

Blogosphere, I tried to get back there.
Blogosphere, I failed.

I 'd be lying if I said I didn't know what I was thinking. It was a Ghost blouse - sheer turquoise and dotted with exhuberant embroidered multicolour spots: blues! yellows! pinks! And can you see this woman's house? She has padded coathangers that tone even with her cast-off outfits- she's clearly got it together. There's something very comforting about all that blonde wood. I start visualising Agas and then I don't know where the day has gone.

Ghost is a great label: its top secret mysteriouso vicose-based fabric that's floaty, sheer, super expensive and can be bunged in the washing machine and come out ready to wear, no iron required. Utilitarian and see-through? Why, I was going to be a young Kate Moss for all the world to see.seaside-y and sheer, exemplifying the English eccentricity of a classic label.It was only £2.20 and gosh, didn't I deserve a treat after my ten successful sales? Didn't Ghost, a shadow of its former self, fashion credentials gone, now that it's a staple for disheartened bridesmaids across Surrey, didn't it deserve to live again in its glory years?

Theory:

Practice:

I look like my mother's kitted me so I don't drool Farley's Rusks all over myself.
Big bib.
BIGGER BABY.

Buying things is not the way forward.
Buying things traps you where you are.
Buying things is lying on the floor in your own filth so you can get get a humorous picture for your blog.

It's going back on ebay, out into the ether, where it belongs. I am also selling the behemoth. that is my four foot high mountain of magazines. My sister asked me with wide eyes: "But who would want them, Beck?" Easy: fashion students, fashion nerds, it's a rich market. I just hope they don't mind the spider corpses. Because they're free.

I am going to die poor in a house made of back issues.

Onward!
Becky