High Heels and Reprobates

The Universe is a Minx

Once upon a time about twenty years ago there was a shared house in Oxford.  There were eight bedrooms, one bathroom and a shower, inexplicably, on the downstairs landing.  The shower was designed for exhibitionists by someone who didn’t do complicated plumbing, with a tatty plastic curtain between the inhabitant and any passing traffic to the kitchen.  If the mood took you, you could go from washing the dishes to washing yourself in the space of ten seconds.  It was that convenient.

In this house, there lived a Serbian, a Croat, a trainee chef, a mixed up girl called Laura, a beautiful girl called Rebecca, her boyfriend, a cat called Purdy and me.  Several other unmemorable civilians passed through over the years, but they’re not important to the story.  Focus your attention first on the boyfriend and then, because I’m a demanding kind of girl, straight back to me at twenty – a flame haired, chain smoker with an attitude too big for my knee high boots.

Very quickly we created an enclave in the house, me and Rebecca and this other force of nature.  He was funny and clever and arrogant as hell and he made every ordinary thing an event, which was lucky because I did a lot of sitting around in big socks drinking tea and watching crap television.  I drove him mad with my slovenliness and my inability to stay up late, making him oscillate between adoration and meanness faster than anyone I’d ever met.  Fortunately though, we never went out anywhere without irony and Marlboro Lights in our pockets (to be fair, at twenty I never actually went anywhere at all without Marlboro Lights in my pockets) so if real life forced normality upon us, we did it with aplomb.  I suppose you could say it was a romantic kind of friendship.  Every time he suggested a city to elope to, I’d laugh and light up another cigarette.

At this particular time in my life, I was madly in love with an arsehole.   I’d saved myself for him because I’d known he was just my type.  The neglectful bastard variety who knew just when to throw a girl a crumb.  Truth be told, the only real skill he possessed was the ability to skin up in the back of a fast moving Volkswagen Polo with the lights off, but in a provincial town in the 90s this was a useful asset.   When the car crash came, I cried on the shoulder of my Oxford friend not recognising his solicitude as love.  What did I know? At the time, he wasn’t free and I was still a girl looking for it in all the wrong places.

Exposition over and we fast forward twenty years.   I am now living down the road from where it all began.  He (and we will call him The Reprobate because that is what he is), conveniently, is in California.  He says I found him and reeled him in (thank you Twitter), but really the universe plays tricks on us all.

I won’t cheapen this with words but here, finally, is a man whose terrace I could sit on, drinking margharitas and eating homemade chilli…..

Election Fever

As a Londoner in exile, I have an aversion to unannounced callers. Two and a half years in the provinces and an impromptu doorbell still sends me in a tailspin.  I run through my mental rollerdex of paranoia: arsonists, burglars, con artists, difficult to get rid of sales people trying to flog you timeshares you never knew you wanted.  Why is my bell ringing?  I’m not having a soirée.  I’m not expecting anything from Amazon.  What is this intrusion?

Saturday afternoon at High Heels Towers and it turns out the rude interruption to my peaceful afternoon is a Terry Thomas replica with beige tombstone teeth and a clip board.  He wants to know if there’s anything he can do to help me.  Well, yes actually. You can get me my own supper club, a beachside apartment, a man who worships the ground I walk on and a writing credit on The Daily Mash.  On a less selfish level, can we go for world peace, an end to despotism and an amnesty on all landmines and opaque tights?

If there was ever a reason not to open the door, it would be to avoid a creaky conversation with your local election candidate.  Terry was of the Liberal Democrat variety, although if I’d been casting, I would have had him down for a light drawing room comedy or one of those inept British airmen on a Number Two tour of ‘Allo ‘Allo.   I wouldn’t have minded his fragile hold on the issues in my street, if his world view hadn’t been so offensively out of date.  After all, his father and grandfather had fought in two World Wars so we could have democracy didn’t you know.  When I told him I was with the 70% who chose not to vote, he helpfully suggested I go and live in Russia and get kicked around there.  Clearly, here was a man who had been cryogenically frozen since the onset of Perestroika.  Here was a man with his finger on the button of life.  I can only imagine that Nick Clegg had sent him back out on the campaign trail once his moustache had thawed out.

I loathe local politics.  It’s so parochial.  At least with Westminster, you can really sink your teeth into the self-aggrandizing, point-scoring, pasty scoffers as they clamber up the greasy pole of their own ambition.   Locally, this is a bit more difficult.  I mean they just don’t have the profile.  They haven’t trodden on as many faces.  Our local Green representative seems like a good woman in a wholemeal sandals kind of way, but the chances of her making a dent of a difference is about as likely as the Bullingdon Club smashing up Nandos.

Here at High Heels we do love a maverick, so thank god then for George Galloway.  Gorgeous George, the Silvio Berlusconi of local MPs, post landslide victory at Bradford West and post fourth wedding, is already busting Call Me Dave’s balls about saving his local Odeon.   Now this is the kind of local politician I’d vote for.  The boil on the butt of the establishment type who wears Ray Bans when the sun isn’t shining and says things like ’do you want me to be a cat’ on national television.  Here is an MP who’d get your bins sorted. You can’t really trust him, but when the entertainment’s this good, who cares?  Look out for pictures in the Press of him sandwiched between two Bunny Girl ice cream sellers beneath the banner Local Cinema Saved from Demolition.   You just know I’m right.

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High Heels would like to apologise to readers for the break in transmission of HH&R owing to technical failures and lapsed credit card details.  Following seven days in an attention-seeking coma, High Heels came round in dramatic fashion, asked for a glass of prosecco and the latest Christian Louboutin slingbacks.   She has now made a full recovery and thanks you for your floral tributes.

You Gotta Have a Gimmick

In May of this year, I will have been three years in the wonderful world of blog.  OK, I’m not as regular as I might be, but I show up.  I attempt to shine my own little light on laughable tosh of life, staying true to the two founding principles of High Heels:  strictly no confessionals and ‘what would Ethel Merman do’?

The downside of being a square peg in the blogosphere is you just can’t get the readers. You’re not cleaving to the zeitgeist or fanning the flames of any particular community’s neuroses, providing a platform for their collective whinge.  Of course, the upside of this outside edge perspective is you get to take the piss out of absolutely everyone. It’s entirely democratic.  With this in mind, and in the spirit of research, I decided to dip into the murky world of the Mumsnet Bloggers’ Forum.  Really find out what popular blogging is all about.

Bloody hell.  Here’s a chat room you wouldn’t want to step inside without the aid of a hard hat, shin pads and a cricket box to protect your privates.  It’s what you might call Open Season amongst the dilating and the lactating.  I’m no fan of Liz Jones (see ‘Have you Met Ms Jones’ January 2010), but recent references to her ‘hairy little Prada enclosed legs’ and poorly applied make up due to the fact that, post face lift, she’s forgotten that her eyes have moved, really are pushing the pram out.  One contributor in the same thread even took to boosting how she’d followed rival columnist Polly Vernon around Sainsbury’s, noting that not only had she looked in every reflective surface she walked past, but that she’d also had chicken goujons in her shopping basket.

I thought parents were all busy these days?  I thought they were ferrying kids around, picking play doh out of their eyebrows in the rear view mirror and wrestling with overwhelming feelings of inadequacy?  Who knew there’d be the time?

Still reeling from this display of spleen, I move onto the ‘Featured Bloggers’ section.  Amongst the usual cupcake pornography, People Having a Lifestyle and, rather bizarrely, davidmilliband.net, there lurks The Plankton.  Can someone please explain to me the success of this anonymous blog about the divorced mum enduring ‘life at the bottom of the sexual food chain’?  The woman has been given a section in the Times and that is simply not right.  It’s only got 442 email followers and even offers up a guest spot for other kvetching divorcees to dissect every minutia of their lives, as if being single were the worst possible affliction to ever suffer from in life.  I’m sure the starving, the tortured and the incarcerated might disagree, Planktons.

Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, no one knows who The Plankton is, which is probably just as well because every men who shows her a batsqueak of interest gets a mention.  Now I’m no dating expert (see ‘Last Chance Saloon’ – September 2009), but I’d imagine if there was ever a big reveal, this might provide an eggy moment.  Comparing yourself to a microscopic drifter who feeds on the shit that other people leave behind is flattering to neither yourself nor your dining companion.  However, in the world of blogging, self-pitying exposés rule.

High Heels may be a pin-prick in the firmament, but it continues to twinkle mischievously.  Next time, I will be insulting chinless wonders, religious bigots and Samantha Cameron’s jogging bottoms.  Do tune in.

The Rainbow Connection

Here’s an interesting bit of About Me trivia for you.  The first album I ever owned was The Muppet Show Volume Two.  I played those vinyl grooves into submission, listening in on a pair of oversized 1970s headphones that made me look like I was bringing in a plane.  My second album was Lou Reed’s Transformer, signifying something of a twelve year lull in my LP buying career.  I accessed this level of coolness via a series of devastatingly unsound singles purchases that included Howard Jones’s Like to Get to Know You Well and Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus.  I should have realised then that the only cool and enduring amphibian in town was Kermit.

You wouldn’t believe the number of child-free adults enjoying The Muppet movie on Friday night at my local Odeon.  There were a few offspring present, but mostly we were untroubled. Once middle class mummy had allowed Noah and Poppy to move around the cinema until they’d both found a seat that suited them, we were all able to settle in for our 138 minutes of much needed nostalgia at the end of the working week.

Anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, here’s a rundown of the plot. The Muppets have long since disbanded. Kermit lives alone in the mansion he once shared with Piggy, nursing lost dreams and mourning tadpoles they never made; Fozzie is part of a tired old tribute act in Reno called The Moopets; Gonzo has become Pimlico Plumbers and Animal is on an anger management programme with Jack Black.  Miss Piggy herself is in Paris, heading up Vogue for the plus size porker and sporting big pearls.  Little do they know that dastardly tycoon Tex Richman wants to tear down the old Muppet Theatre and drill for oil.

Cue maniacal laugh and enter Gary and Walter. Man and Muppet, yet inexplicably, brothers.  As the show’s greatest fans, they decide to round up the team to do what they do best; put on make-up, dress up right and raise the curtain.  All in the hope of raising the $10 million needed to save the building from Tex’s evil clutches.  After an unpromising start, the telethon proves a big hit, with the last push made by adorably shy Walter who finally finds his talent – Roger Whittaker style whistling. Or in other words, 1970s nostalgia we could all do without.

So what is it about The Muppets that we all still love?  Why do we identify with these coloured singing socks?  Is it because they represent the best part of us and mirror all our frailties?  Allow me to clarify this startling academic observation.  You see, sometimes I feel like Piggy too.  Empowered and diva-esque. Wanting to go HI YAAAAH.  Feeling an overwhelming urge to duet with Petula Clark in a lavalier that goes all the way down to my waist.  Other times I just feel like Beaker. Meep meep meeping my way through Feelings whilst all around, life is going off like exploding Bunsen burners.  The point is, however we feel or however we behave, we all like the idea of the rainbow connection.  Frankly, if I could live in a theatre with thirty six of my closest friends and put on a show every Saturday night with whomever was hot to trot on the entertainment stakes, I would ask for no more.

Nearly forty years on, the Muppets careers continue to thrive; which is more than can be said for some of its guest stars.  Try Wikipedia-ing it.  For every Elton John and Liza Minelli, there was a Milton Berle and a Cloris Leachman harmonising with Gonzo and his Chickens.  Sometimes it was darkly poignant (Kermit tells Peter Sellers to be himself and he replies he cannot. “There is no me.  I had it surgically removed”), mostly it was plain silly (Don’t Sugar Me, sung by a mouse in a tea cup) but always we loved it.

As for middle class mummy, there’s only this to say.  Remember the days when children were made to sit where they were told and eat their Space Dust in silence?  These are the kind of moments I’m wistful for.  That and ba-ba-ba-baaing along to the Pearl and Dean advert whilst trying not to drip bright yellow mustard on my chinos.  I know this is 2012, but please stop deferring to your child.  She’s three.  And apart from anything else, I don’t think Piggy would approve.

I’m Still Here

Call off the dogs, extinguish the hurricane lamps and send the search party home.  Just like that dormant orchid you’ve been staring at for months, High Heels has finally re-bloomed and returns from exile for your guilty reading pleasure.  Expect frivolous commentary and precision aimed lampooning of all known forms of stupidity. In other words, it’s business as usual.

But before I slip into my come back dress and start belting out a power ballad, where has HH&R been these past four months?  Well, I’m a story teller, so here’s the tale *props foot on tree stump and starts strumming a lute* (for all those who didn’t watch Children’s ITV in the 80s, this image will be lost on you).

I was seconded into a deviant cult.  They bundled me into the boot of a Renault Espace and drove me to an unnamed compound where I was stripped of my blackberry and Kurt Geigers.  I was then handed a polyester tabard and a pair of Crocs and forced to plough fields with a Shetland pony and the arse bone of a giraffe.  Starved of the tools of creativity, I eventually became disenchanted with the written word and was fit only for the company of de-frocked priests and chain-smoking dowagers.  Plus, of course, my arches fell due to the Crocs enslavement.

It wasn’t a good time.

Fortunately, I staged an audacious escape, although for legal reasons I am unable to divulge any further details at this time.

I hope that fills in some gaps for you.

With my recent social life being as exciting as an Aimish rummage sale, I’ve had ample time to hone my encyclopaedic knowledge of Dallas in preparation for its rebirth on our screens.  In the past couple of months I’ve sat through Clayton’s amnesia, Pammy’s elopement with the man who rebuilt her (art imitating life) and a Cuprinol-coated cameo by Gail Hunnicut which rendered me almost speechless.  Other things I’ve been doing are exercising my culinary muscles, securing myself a new job and editing the first chapter of a novel.   Please do have a read (if you’re receiving this through an RSS feed, I’ve posted it on the site).  It’s called Cecille – Part One (inspiration hasn’t hit yet) and could be described as The Golden Girls meets Chicago.

Here’s the tagline:

Cecille Mary Myers, ex-hoofer, Broadway star and alleged murderess is coaxed out of retirement by a young producer who desperately needs a big commercial hit.  The only trouble is the play’s subject matter is a bit close to the bone and it’s creating a media circus on both sides of the Atlantic.  Three days after opening night, Cecille loses her nerve and walks off the show, refusing to leave her suite at The Savoy.  Before the producer can get her back, he’s got to get to the bottom of her dark secret….if he can get through the legions of people demanding their money back first….

Vintage Glamour Celeb Spots

The Glamour Factory

Next month, I will be simultaneously channelling Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford and Elizabeth Taylor.  Isn’t this just a normal day, readers?  Or has High Heels finally succumbed to a retro style multi personality disorder?  Get your wire coat hangers and large sparkly rocks at the ready, because on Friday 7 October, High Heels and Reprobates will be running the Vintage Twitter Bureau at The National Portrait Gallery, in conjunction with The Glamour of the Gods exhibition.

For one night only, the NPG will transform itself into The Glamour Factory, a series of star-making departments designed to make you feel like an idol of the silver screen.   Expect to be primped, preened, papped and generally entertained, with ample opportunities to get all atwitter with HH&R.  Your tweets will be projected across the High Heels Secretariat where you can also try your hand at being Hedda Hopper for the night, tweeting about your favourite stars on a vintage typewriter.

I’ve been devouring Hollywood biographies for as long as I’ve been wearing heels and I’ve often wondered if you could assemble the perfect look what it would be.  Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes, Sophia Loren’s legs, Marlene’s cheekbones, Marilyn’s appeal, Vivien Leigh’s everything? (I’ll pass on her state of mind).  Whatever extra-terrestrial beauty you ended up with, it wouldn’t look like someone on the pull at Inside Soap Awards.  When Ava Gardner went on the pull it was Frank Sinatra or, if he was too busy singing/sulking, she collected matadors.  See?  Effortlessly stylish.  Only, it was never effortless.  It was painful (#Rita Hayworth’s hair line), it was extreme (#Joan Crawford’s ice cube facials) and more often than not, it was a bit dubious (#Marilyn Monroe’s dealer).

The end result though was something luminous and unforgettable.  The Studios didn’t want just looks, they wanted personality and headlines.  There aren’t enough tomes to fill with the excesses of Elizabeth Taylor.  Who else would fly her favourite kind of chilli across three time zones?  Or have a puppy who mistook Mary Tudor’s giant pearl for a squeaky toy?

In the name of research, I have finally braved Mommie Dearest and am still reeling from the matching outfits.  Forget banishment to a convent, this is lasting abuse committed to celluloid.  Mother and daughter gurning in red velvet pinafore dresses.  Mother and daughter posing against marble fireplaces in embroidered gingham, looking like the stuff of Tyrolean nightmares.  And underneath all that home spun wholesomeness, it’s just Joan Crawford.  The woman rumoured to have slept with everyone in Hollywood except Lassie.  When it came to manipulating her image, Crawford was the maestro.

So, if you fancy getting Ready for Your Close-up, come down to WC2 and sign your handprint on the NPG Walk of Fame.  Other highlights include Illamasqua makeover transformations for screen sirens and matinee idols, the Broken Hearts Cocktail Lounge with a set from Jazz FM’s Peppermint Candy DJs, compered by the irrepressible David Piper, Commander of Special Operations for Hendrick’s Gin, a silver screening of Top Hat, a Glamorous Debate and much, much more…..

High Heels and Reprobates will be Secretariat for the Vintage Twitter Bureau at The Glamour Factory, National Portrait Gallery on Friday 7 October 6 pm – 10 pm.  Entrance is free dahling, but dressing up in black and white is de rigueur.

Find out more and book department tickets at www.npg.org.uk/lateshift

For breaking news follow on twitter @NPGGlamour and @Sirenheels

http://www.jazzfm.com/shows/peppermint-candy

http://www.illamasqua.com/

Dave and Boris go on a Jaunt

How tired we are at High Heels to listen to David Cameron banging on about the underclass and its sense of self-entitlement.  Everyone knows there’s no sector of society that feels more self-entitled  than the upper middle classes, of which callmedave is a flag waving member.  If you look at the evidence, common looting vs posh looting is surprisingly similar.  Less Footlocker and a lot more FTSE, but the plunder is still the same.

Comparing one of the looters with, say, a particularly toxic variety of student at an elitist university and you’ll find the demographic isn’t all that different. Neither feel they have to trawl through The Guardian for six months to get a job, both smash up public places and steal things Bullingdon style and interestingly enough, both are too lazy to pronounce their consonants.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to fix ‘frankly sick Britain’, even Joan Collins (although I’m not sure that UKIP and more mascara is really the answer).  No, what is required right here and right now is for Dave and Boris to go on a Gap Yah.  And preferably together because that would be so much funnier.  Just imagine the two goons of politics going on a wander, not around South East Asia and the Galapagos Islands, but around the sink estates of the United Kingdom – kipping on sofas, doing a bit of listening and generally getting a sense of the demi monde created by the fair hands of Margaret Thatcher.  Pack your pashminas boys and let’s rahly go native!  First Stop Oxford!

Oh the banter!  We could literally be in Blackbird Leys.  That’s the estate conveniently situated over the other side of the Ring Road, so we don’t have to look at it.  It’s muchos povo, but if you check out The Blackbird, the lash is really cheap.  Some of the chaps smashed up a restaurant on Banbury Road last night, but it’s OK because they’re going in with a cheque once they’ve stopped chundering.   Owners looked a bit scared, but it’s a free refurb, yah?  Where next?  Ooop north?

One of the kids on this estate just called me a fooking lying t**t, Boris.  I told him I’d get my lawyer on him, but he just laughed and pulled out a full syringe.  That’s the trouble with young people these days.   No manners or respect for the law.  Boris?  For Christ’s sake man, are you belching the alphabet again?  You better not behave like that at The Oval.  I scheduled in an afternoon of cricket just to infuriate the chavs….after that it’s Middlesbrough for two months, so brace yourself.

These, sadly, are our leaders.  And we wonder why we are in so much trouble.  Who would I leave in charge of London and the UK whilst The Chuckle Brothers went AWOL? Annie Lennox for the top job and Basil Brush to stand in for Boris.  Seems more than fair.

True Romance

The reading of romantic fiction is bad for your health and leads to unsatisfactory relationships, says British sexpert Dr Susan Quilliam.  Now this simply is not true.  I’ve never been near a Mills and Boon and I’ve had a whole bunch of crap relationships that have made me want to throw up.   According to her recent essay in The Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care, Quilliam claims that bodice rippers are leaving the ladies with unrealistic expectations, and even an aversion to condoms.   It seems that Harlequin is doing to women what excessive porn watching is doing to men.  Or at least so says the woman who updated the beards in The Joy of Sex.

This whole romance thing is an interesting subject.   In fact it’s probably a thesis.  We all know Barbara Cartland swore by it.  Mini series doyenne, Jane Seymour dedicated an entire book to it.   But what is it?  And who is it actually for?

Anyone who will admit to reading Jane Seymour’s Guide to Romantic Living (it was an IRONIC gift, readers, you know like leg warmers, or space dust) will know this book is about as off-note as a congealed bottle of Le Jardin.   In between filming Dr Quinn Medicine Woman and poncing around on a flower garlanded swing, La Seymour took the time to tell us all how to weave a bit of magic into our dull, non-celebrity lives.

According to the much married Miss Seymour, romance is ‘an attitude’ that you don’t need to have a stately pile or even long hair to experience.   Neither do you need to look like you’ve just rolled around in Madame de Pompadour’s boudoir and come up for air surrounded, quite inexplicably, by a flock of swans (see back cover).  What you do need however are some smelly candles, a tin of lumpfish caviar and a predilection for impromptu picnics.  Well, in the words of my new favourite blog www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com, this is in fact:  horsecrap.

Romance isn’t about mysticism and femininity.  Anyone who thinks about it for more than thirty seconds will concede that Romance was a male invention.  In fact, it was probably invented in a shed by a man from Tonbridge Wells who was avoiding his wife.  There he was tinkering away on his work bench one day when kazaam!    He thought he’d just short circuited his power drill, but no, he’d only played a blinder and come up with Romance!   Now he’d never have to beg for sex again!  He might even get away with unloading the dishwasher.  Again!

There are so many misconceptions about what is Romantic.  Small cuddly animals clutching satin hearts that say ‘I Wuv You’ are not Romantic.   Grown women receiving soft toys from men they are having sex with is just wrong on every level.   Victoria Wood puts it more succinctly when she says ‘it’s very difficult to maintain an erection when surrounded by twenty seven gonks’.  

Other things that are not Romantic:  Valentine’s Day (the Thorpe Park of Romance – overpriced, overrated and you’ll still have nothing to say in the restaurant later), doing a shout out on Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs (‘She’s my rock’, now let’s play some Chris De Burgh), Thorntons chocolates, yellow chrysanths from the Esso Garage and oversized, puffy cards from Hallmark.

When someone takes you out for dinner on your birthday or buys you a bunch of flowers, take it from High Heels, they are not being Romantic.  They are being kind.  Either that or they are using diversion tactics to get out of grouting the bathroom.

How to be a woman

Caitlin Moran doesn’t like wearing high heels.  To Germaine Greer, it may be low level foot binding, but Moran sees it more as an optical illusion/female delusion that never quite works out.    If you want porcine pegs, she says (fat at the top, tapering into puffy, painful little trotters) squeeze yourself into a £495 pair of Manolo Blahnik sling-backs and hobble off to the nearest taxi rank. 

Walking elegantly in high heels, she says, is a rare and admirable skill ‘like tightrope walking or blowing smoke rings’, so if you’re not Agyness Deyn with pins like stripped willow, do yourself and the rest of womankind a favour.  Stick to DM’s.  They’re far easier to dance in and absolutely ideal for running away from murderers. 

Surprisingly enough, I concur.  There’s not much I don’t agree with in Ms Moran’s How to be a Woman, although I do have another 115 pages to go.  Two chapters in and I am punching the air.  At last!  Someone willing to address with humour the ridiculousness of turning your cha-cha into Phil Mitchell’s head without the features!   Someone prepared to commit to paper that spending £21K on ‘the best day of your life’ is total bollocks and that wedding mania is All Women’s Fault!  (grooms don’t give a toss – they’d rather be reading the sports section!!)   That actually, asking someone when they are going to produce offspring is INCREDIBLY BLOODY RUDE!

OK, I may be aping her overuse of the exclamation mark, but nonetheless, this is a funny and insightful book.  It takes you through the utter awfulness of becoming a woman, whatever the hell being a woman means.  I mean who gets to decide?  Theresa May?  The Editor of Nuts?   Personally, I can make my own mind up, but in the meantime I’m more than happy to listen to the views of anyone who has the wit to describe Katie Price as ‘Vichy France with tits’.   

The best thing about Moran’s writing is her honest re-telling of the teenage years.  Some of it makes for uncomfortable reading, but it certainly got me thinking about mine.  Turns out I wasn’t such a freak as I thought.  We were all at it.   Immac-ing our faces twice a week and having imaginary relationships with people on TV that took us through the gamut of courtship to tragic early widowhood.  Hey, I had one that lasted over two years with an Australian actor called Jon Blake who starred in a mini series called Anzacs.  It was the longest and happiest relationship I’ve had to date.  I got bought flowers and everything.  Sorry to say though readers, I have just googled Jon and discovered that he did actually die on 29 May of this year from complications resulting from pneumonia.  Once I’ve finished this, I will be dressing in black and keening at the top of the stairs.

Any girl who gets through adolescence without having to resort to beta blockers and moonshine  should be given some kind of award.  Looks at what they’ve had to endure.  Agonising early periods, snogging tooth marks on their upper lips, teenage boys making farting noises with their armpits and chucking scrunched up packet of cheese and onion crisps down their throats, secure in the belief that they are utterly irresistible.   In spite of all this, the average teenage girl will still think she is not good enough, not pretty enough and not clever enough, plus she’s now expected to spend £25 per month sanitising and infantilising her foof.  

Simone de Beauvoir might have been a miserable cow, but maybe she was right.  You’re not born a woman, you become one, and it probably begins the moment you stop jumping through the hoops of other peoples’ expectations in tiny knickers.   So, about thirty eight then…..