About last night

Blimey. I'm hesitant to write about this, but... hey, after two years of spilling my guts online for international amusement and wincing, why come over all shy and coquettish now, eh?

I went on a date last night. And although he was really nice, clever and funny, and he was easily recognisable from the photos he'd posted on the internet where I met him - sadly, there was a reason the photos were only headshots. Reader, he was on the large side.

I tried not to be judgmental. After all, I am not the world's slimmest person, and I am fully aware of the hypocrisy of coming across as fattist. Once we'd greeted each other in the pub and taken a seat, I thought that maybe I'd been unfair. But no, when he leapt up to get us another drink after half an hour, and lightly galloped over to the bar in that curiously balletic manner that very large people often possess, I realised that I would never be able to find him attractive. He wasn't just 'I like the odd high-calorie meal and a few pints every now and then' fat - he was 'I couldn't run for a bus without risking hospitalisation' fat. And, nice though he was, there is just no way I could ever respect or fancy someone who took so little care of their own health and appearance.

He texted me when I got home, to say that he'd like to see me again, and I emailed him this morning to say that I just hadn't felt The Spark, that I was sorry and that I wished him all the best. There are those who think I should have come clean and told him the truth, for his own good, but I am too cowardly for that confrontation.

So, back to the drawing board! It's another stunning day in this most wonderful of cities, apparently the last for a while, and I am sitting on my sofa with the sun pouring in through my window, listening to Radio 4 and feeling extremely happy to be alive. And not that fat.

Mmm, Parma

Why would I not move to the Home of Ham? That aside, last night, with one foot in bandages and the other an attractive shade of tarred plum, I was cooking for my friend Alex and burned my right hand while holding a hot pan with an oven glove. This all seems rather unfair - if one chooses to run with a torn ligament then limping strikes me as appropriate; and the falling drunk out of a bus incident led to well-deserved swelling. But burning my hand really quite badly through an oven glove is surely a little unjustified. I now have an attractive blister on the pad beneath my right index finger where I gripped the grill pan - and my amazing seventies-inspired, Urban-Outfitters-in-Seattle-bought hot pad is clearly more of a designer item than one intended for actual cooking. Pah. My left hand (which is, incidentally, the one I prefer) is now my only limb without an injury. I will try and avoid mincing machines and/or combat situations in the next few days.

Hello, is that The Priory?

I think I may be the opposite of anorexic. I don't know the word for that. It's not 'fat', it's something else. I shall call the condition 'Denialemia'. I know I'm not the world's slimmest girl and I'm pretty sure I don't need to have my stomach stapled - I think I'm somewhere in the middle: when I look in the mirror I normally think something like, 'Yeah, I could lose a few pounds, but I still look fairly OK.'

So it was a shock and a severe disappointment when I went online today to look at the newly-uploaded professional photographs that were taken at the Finsbury Park run on Sunday. I was by no means imagining some Anneka-Rice-in-Treasure-Hunt-catsuit stunner to appear wearing my running number, but I did think that it would require some slimness of thigh and firmness of calf to pound 10 kilometers of a September morn. How wrong I was.

Here, for your amusement, is the better of the two photos. I haven't spent £7 on the professional version, because I would consider that an appalling use of my wages. So it's bad quality and has PREVIEW written over it. Naughty me. I have blurred my face and cropped me at the waist to hide my legs and feet - but just to help you envisage, my legs, normally about half the length of my 5 feet and 8 and a half inches, appear to have been crushed by the impact of the run. In the photograph, they seem to be approximately the length of my head, but several times as wide. They are encased in shiny black lycra running trousers that I thought made me look sporty but, I now realise, make me look like a SlimFast 'Before' picture. Livid.

Sadly, the other photo was far worse. You know those breeches that the men wear in Jane Austen costume dramas, which are pretty skintight from the ankle up, but at about mid-thigh level, suddenly flare out, nipping in at the waist, leaving a strange pocket of unfilled fabric? I looked like I was wearing a black pair of those - but the strange pockets on both sides were filled with my fat. I genuinely appear deformed. I showed Laura and after she'd stopped laughing, she admitted that there was something odd about it - her assurances that I don't normally look like that weren't much comfort.

How much of what we see in the mirror is self-imposed rubbish, I wonder? I heard recently that people make their opinions about your appearance in the first ten seconds that they meet you, and from that point on they never reevaluate them, i.e., if they thought you were beautiful on first glance, you could look like a mangey tramp and they'd still see the good points. I think I may have decided a while ago that I'm a six out of ten - and while I have some excellent days where my score skyrockets up to a 6.5, there are also days when I should probably stay indoors to protect the innocents outside from a shock. I need to know the truth. But either way, I'm burning the lycra.

PS

I forgot to mention the second worst bit of all this: thanks to yesterday's drunkenness and today's hangover, I have eaten about six times my own bodyweight in junk food, thus gaining back every single fat gram I may have burnt off on my run and ensuring that any benefit is purely spiritual.

Over the course of the picnic, I consumed a prawn mayonnaise sandwich, many pretzels, two penguins, a mini Babybel and the World's Most Fattening Chocolate Flapjack from M&S, and later on, Joanna and I shared a portion of cheese-topped potato wedges (with sour cream - why not?!) at the pub. Then when I got home I toasted four slices of malt loaf, buttered them and inhaled them. And this morning, I woke up, gingerly put my two injured feet down on the floor beside my bed, and instead of carpet beneath them, was greeted by the crackling sensation of two empty packets of Pombear crisps and the remaining four squares of a large bar of Green & Black's milk chocolate, which brought back hazy memories of a midnight binge. Oh the shame. Today I started off with good intentions and ate some fresh berries and a handful of nuts for breakfast. But by mid-morning I felt horrific with alcohol withdrawal and had to have an emergency bag of ready salted Walker's. For lunch I had a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and a bag of Doritos - and I'm still ravenous. If someone started eating a pizza near me now, I think I would cry with jealousy.

Highs and lows

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. It was all going so well.

Carb-loading works, for a start. I was bouncy and full of energy as I made my way to Finsbury Park yesterday morning - it was really quite amazing to see all the other turquoise T-shirts coming together on the tube as we got closer to the circuit and we were so lucky to have another absolutely stunning day. And after a fair amount of waiting round once I arrived, I have to admit that setting off with over two thousand other smiling runners, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds between us for Cancer Research, music pumping through my headphones, crowds of supporters cheering, the park looking so beautiful, everyone bursting with London pride, well, it was all fairly emotional.

And I made it! 10 kilometers, twice round a challenging course that included three bad hills, but I did it without stopping, in 1 hour 8 minutes, a time with which I'm very pleased as a) when I've run 9k during training, it's taken me around 1 hour 7 mins, so I managed to squeeze in an extra kilometer into the same amount of time, in spite of the untrained-for hills and the heat and b) the damaged ligament in my foot, which I'd hoped would hold off until about half way round the course, started hurting as I approached the 1k marker, which was annoying. But all in all, it was a wonderful, memorable and moving experience, something I never imagined I would enjoy as much as I did - and I wore my medal with pride all the way home.

In preparation for the run, I hadn't had any alcohol on Saturday, something that I found worryingly irritating, so yesterday afternoon, when Sarah and Joanna and I met in Green Park to sit on deckchairs, eat a picnic and celebrate my run's completion, I got stuck in to the dry Reisling with perhaps a little more gusto than I should have. And perhaps I should have gone home at about 6pm when Sarah did, instead of going to a pub in Shepherd's Market with Joanna, where we carried on putting the world to rights with some Chilean Sauvignon, before I realised that I hadn't been given my £20 cashback by the barmaid some time earlier, and went to reclaim it, and was flirtatiously accused of stealing by a pair of lecherous Sloaney married men in their forties, who then joined us for the rest of the evening, plying us with drinks and eventually trying to persuade us to go to Tramp with them, even though we were both barely able to stand with giddy inebriation and also wearing jeans. Fortunately my sanity clicked in at this point and I managed to guide Joanna away from temptation and shortly afterwards, I got on the bendy bus back home where I half lay on the concertina middle section, barely able to see and giggling helplessly to myself at half-remembered nuggets from the evening. Upon arrival at my destination, and keen to favour my bandaged left foot, I stepped boldly from the bus onto my right foot, twisted my ankle, collapsed onto the pavement, losing my shoe in the process, and all I can really remember is several strangers trying to help me stand, and me howling with laughter and saying, 'I can't get up because I am too drunk,' and them all starting to laugh too.

Today I have a bandaged left foot while the ankle on my right foot has swollen to the size of a small apple and is bruising by the minute. I am hobbling as if massively arthritic while still laughing to myself at the random, disreputable hilarity of the whole experience. It was, all in all, a brilliant day. Mum: I'm sorry.

Saturday in the City

It's been the most stunning day here in this most beautiful of cities. I spent a shocking amount of time inside this morning, instead of gambolling around in nearby parks - but I was lying in the sun, basking on my sofa, finally finishing off The Mitfords (excellent), so was certainly appreciating the external gorgeousness while not actually being out in it. Then in the late afternoon I went to meet Sara and we had a delicious walk along the Thames, eating figs, not affording grilled meat products, photographing me and the Houses of Parliament (not together), talking about film and art and boys and other topics of weight. It was lovely. Now we're back at my flat, I've 'carb-loaded' in preparation for my 10k run tomorrow morning, we've watched The X-Factor and Sara is snoring very sweetly on my sofa after her hardcore night out last night, which meant she didn't get to bed until 6.30 this morning.

I'm feeling a bit weird about tomorrow morning. The furthest I've ever run is 9k, and the last time I jogged was on Wednesday and my foot started hurting after about 20 minutes. Today it hurt even when I was only walking. So, the short story is that I clearly shouldn't be running at all. But... I said I'd do it, I want to do it, I doubt I'll do it again... It has to be done.

To alleviate the stress and distract myself today, I made my playlist for the event. It is as follows (to be played on Shuffle):

My My My (Radio Edit) Armand Van Helden
Toxic Britney Spears
Galvanize The Chemical Brothers
Notorious Duran Duran
Feel Good Inc. Gorillaz
Move Your Feet Junior Senior
Everything Is Everything Lauryn Hill
Always On My Mind Pet Shop Boys
Millennium Robbie Williams
Comfortably Numb Scissor Sisters
Freak Like Me Sugababes
Crazy (Single Version) Gnarls Barkley
Hollaback Girl Gwen Stefani
Gold Digger feat. Jamie Foxx Kanye West
Roam The B-52's
Blue Song Mint Royale
Overprotected Britney Spears
Sledgehammer Peter Gabriel
Alphabet Street Prince
Sweet Dreams My LA Ex Rachel Stevens
Acceptable In the 80's Calvin Harris
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger Daft Punk
Mama's Always On Stage Arrested Development
Thou Shalt Always Kill Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip
My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style Dream Warriors
World's Greatest Lover Farrell Lennon
Can't Speak French Girls Aloud
Cold As Ice M.O.P.
Everything is Everything Phoenix
A Fifth Of Beethoven Walter Murphy
That's Not My Name The Ting Tings
American Boy (feat. Kanye West) Estelle
Black & Gold Sam Sparro
La Ritournelle Sebastien Tellier

Wish me luck.

Never forget

From time to time, I send myself emails. I do this, not in order to boost my inbox count and self-confidence, but to remind myself of certain things that I deem important.

Today, unusually, I sent myself two emails. The first was a selection of quotations, copied from a thread on the Guardian's Comment is Free board, concerning the importance of personal freedom and the self-serving hypocrisy of Big Government. You can read them here:

"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all." Jacob Hornberger

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H.L. Mencken

"It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve." Henry George

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." C. S. Lewis

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." Ayn Rand

"It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself." Justice Casey Percell

"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." Robert A. Heinlein

The other email I sent myself was to remind me to put this on my Christmas list. Pity those who feel the need to be consistently highbrow.

Hypocrisy alert

I believe that human lives are, while probably not objectively more important, certainly more of a priority to me than those of animals. It's not like I don't care about our furry friends, because I really truly do. But if there was a child and a puppy in front of me, and I had to shoot one, I'd kill the puppy. I'm sorry to be brutal, but that's the way things are. I might really love the puppy, and I know it would never have hurt anyone and that it is completely undeserving of death by bullet, but the child has the potential to change the world for all its inhabitants, whereas, with the possible exception of Lassie, as far as I am aware, dogs are unlikely to do much except eat, sleep, run around, hump people's legs and bark.

For this reason, I tend to avoid animal charities and slightly despair of people who give to them. Surely we should be sorting out our own species before worrying about giving sanctuary to donkeys? I know, it's disgusting how ill-treated these innocent creatures are, and I mean that with all sincerity - but a lot of humans are treated fairly horrifically as well. I'd rather get those many messes cleared up first and then move on to our four-legged pals. With that as my carefully-formed opinion, I try hard to stick to this, to care more about human tragedies than those involving animals. And, for the most part, I succeed.

But I'm not made of stone, goddamit! How can anyone resist a box of kittens?! Or a wobbly foal taking its first steps? Just the thought of those baby penguins snuggled under their dads' bellies to protect themselves from the freezing winter is enough to make tears prick my eyes. Imagine, therefore, the unpleasant yank at my heartstrings when I read in today's paper that guillemots have become so hungry due to lack of fish in the North Sea that they are now killing each others' chicks to lessen the demand for what little food is available. Apparently, guillemot couples only have one baby a year, and in the past, one parent would stay at home while the other would go out on the hunt for fish. Now, however, there's such a shortage of marine snackage that often both parents have to go scavenging, leaving their precious chick unguarded. In the absence of their protective parents, the chicks have been attacked by rivals, and even pushed off the cliffs onto the rocks below. The thought of a flightless baby guillemot plummeting towards certain death, having been pushed over the edge by a murderous cliff neighbour, makes me very sad indeed. I know worse things have happened at sea, and certainly on land, but sometimes perspective is hard to keep.

On the upside, as I was walking towards the tube this morning, a guy with a strong Jamaican accent drawled 'Hey girrrrrl - niiiiicccce glaaaassssessss'. And he didn't even comment on my arse. So that's good.

Once in a lifetime

If all these financial pundits are right, today will be talked about in banking circles long after we've all hit the permanent hay. Of course, it's not my area of expertise, but Lehmans going bust was apparently not on the agenda - after the US Federal Reserve bailed out Bear Stearns earlier this year, no one thought they'd let something as big as Lehmans go under. But under it's gone - and the predicted fallout was so big that my boss got in to work at 4am today and couldn't work out how to turn on the lights on our floor. We're illuminated now, though, so I'm guessing he solved the problem.

So it's all go at work for the big guns, with a Wall Street panic bigger than anything anyone's seen in a fair while. For me, it's business as usual; not much I can do about it, other than offer everyone lots of cups of tea and try to make myself useful. Of course, if I was allowed some input, I'd tell everyone to go home and have a nice long sleep. Then when we came back, I'd give a series of lectures about why money is the root of all evil, and cap the maximum earnings of everyone at £200,000 - which I think is about the most anyone could possibly need. I'd give the rest to the government to invest in hospitals and teachers' salaries. Who's with me?

Early Autumn summary

So on Friday after work, I rushed over to King's Cross to meet Astrid and various others for our choir trip up to Cambridge. After a packed train journey with no possibility of snack facilities, five of us pelted into a handy M&S Simply Food for post-train nourishment, fearing (rightly) a long rehearsal period before dinner. Armed with a selection of sandwiches, couscous, vine leaves and jelly babies, we hailed a nearby cab and within seconds of pulling away from the kerb were vigorously enjoying our hard-purchased snacks. But not for long.
"Are you aware," the driver shouted over his shoulder, "that there is an £80 soilage fee?" We snickered. Soilage is, after all, a very funny word.
"And I will charge," he continued ominously. Some of our number stopped eating. I, however, was halfway through a hastily-purchased ham-and-mustard-mayo-on-wholegrain and extremely loath to return it to its triangular case.
"Really?" I asked in my most pleading tones, weighing up the likelihood of a soiling incident involving a ham sandwich. "What if we absolutely guarantee that we will not soil?"
"Yes," continued Deborah. "What if the soilage is of a crumb-based nature and easily brush-offable?" Eventually, the driver's icy heart thawed and he agreed that, so long as any soilage was contained on our person, or brushed away immediately from the vinyl flooring, we might be allowed to continue our munching.
"£80 seems such an arbitrary amount," I remarked quietly to no-one as we continued on our way.
"Do you want to know why it's £80?" barked back the driver, who had hearing like a bat on kryptonite. He didn't wait for an answer. "The soilage fee used to be £20, but it was £80 on the streets. So it was actually more cost-effective to hail a cab and soil in there." You learn something new every day.

All too soon, we arrived at the stunning Queen's College, which dates back from the 15th century. The city and the college were as awesome and breathtaking as I remembered them, and once again I found it extraordinary that each year, thousands of little 18 year olds head off to Oxford and Cambridge, eagerly becoming part of this ancient and remarkable tradition of learning and pomp, while the rest of us either go somewhere a lot more like Real Life, or choose not to bother with further education at all. It doesn't suprise me at all that Oxbridge graduates are so often over-confident - I imagine I would be too if I'd passed the entrance exams and made it through the course. I couldn't have gone, of course: even if I'd have tried and succeeded to get in, I would have been miserable. There's no way I could have engaged intellectually to such vertiginous levels at that age, and I know people who were so terrified of wasting time while revising for their Oxford finals that they used to run to the loo to save valuable seconds. Not my idea of fun. Then again, perhaps it's not meant to be fun. Perhaps it's an in-at-the-deep-end experience from which you'll benefit for the rest of your life. That all requires a bit too much long-term thinking from a teenager though... Either way, there's no denying that they are simply incredible, unique places and I find them intriguing and compelling and fascinating while, simultaneously, feeling as though there is something a bit uncomfortable and weird about it all, so far from normality that it's almost alien - and not necessarily in a good way. But hey, I'm probably just jealous.

Anyway, enough with the seriousness. We went straight to the chapel, rehearsed, giggled a lot when the voice of one of the hidden sound guys unexpectedly asked "Can you hear me?" through an echoing PA system and Aiden said "God?", did some recording, went back to the incredible Lodge, had delicious food, drank a lot of lovely wine and then repaired to the Music Room, where there were books signed by Elizabeth R. and a fantastic baby grand and a harpsichord that's doubtless older than Cliff Richard - and suddenly it emerged that I am about the only member of the choir who isn't a professional pianist, as performer after performer emerged to regale us with Chopin and Oasis and Debussy and Celine Dion. It was all going wonderfully and then we were sent to bed. Clearly feeling rebellious, Astrid and I stayed up chatting until far too early in the morning and regretted it on Saturday morning when we were hit with the unpleasant force of an 8am start and a day's full-on singing, knackering at the best of times. Miraculously, the recording session went well and I headed back to London late afternoon, fell asleep on the sofa, woke up in the evening, watched and sang along to the Last Night of the Proms, tried and failed to avoid feeling patriotic and then went to sleep.

Today I slept in far too late, read a book, worshipped at the altar of Rodney 'Yoga God' Yee for an hour and then went into the deserted City to meet Kate and go to see an obscure production of Hamlet for which I'd bought tickets on a whim a couple of weeks ago. I usually don't 'do' theatre any more these days, unless it's a) a musical, or b) at the National, or c) I really, really like one of the actors, or d) if it's Avenue Q. But this production has had rave reviews so, on this occasion, I made an exception. The troupe is called The Factory and the gimmick is, they perform anywhere and everywhere, never the same venue twice (our performance was in CASS Business School near Old Street) and they all rehearse the lines of several characters in the play and then switch around at unexpected moments during the performance. The audience were asked to bring props along and these were incorporated randomly into the scenes. I thought it might be fun - but it turns out my four rules of theatre-going were spot on. It was absolutely unbearable, winning the dubious honour of being the only play I've ever wanted to walk out of before it had even begun, as when we walked into the first scene's room, the cast were wandering around the audience doing the most unbearable warm-up exercises, sounding every bit like the pretentious, self-conscious luvvies they so clearly are. One man was doing elaborate Pilates moves on stage while others were doing rubber lipped exercises and saying 'Ya Ya YA Ya YA Ya' in top projection mode. I groaned and Kate rubbed her hands together eagerly.

The conceit of switching actors mid-soliloquy was distracting, entirely unnecessary, whacky for whacky's sake, and showed just how little the production team cared about the words - the meaning of so many speeches was utterly lost. This was an arrogant production, impossible to follow unless you know the play intimately, seemingly a self-indulgent ruse to allow a group of drama school toffs to show off their ability to switch between parts unexpectedly. Their memories for the lines were undeniably good and there were several talented actors - but on the whole, I found the experience awkward, cringe-inducingly self-conscious and painfully smug. Kate loved it though, as did the Evening Standard and almost every other reviewer, so go figure.

Now I'm at home, drinking mint tea and about to head to bed. One final nugget: I've done a lot of research, Faithful, and the truth is this: Lenor is, by far, the best fabric softener I have ever sampled.

Spamtastic

Google mail's spam filter is extremely effective, so it's only rarely that I cautiously open the junk folder to check what lies within. Today I read a few of the titles and couldn't help smiling. Here are a few of my favourites (all absolutely genuine):

Get vitamins for your man rod
Tap your organ growth potential today
Avoid disappointment, get a larger pole today
Improve the size of your pecker
Britney will love your anatomy
Be godly in bed
Pope denies receiving oral sex from Jamie Lynn Spears
"Britney tried to drain my scrotum": Bush
Britney Spears admits "My Vagina Made Me Shave My Head Bald"

Do women not read spam? Do all males want to have sex with a member of the Spears family? There appears to be a heavy reliance on there being a lot of thick men with penis complexes out there. It would have to be a lot more plausible to fool the ladies. Something like these might work:

Lose weight by eating Malteasers
Free first class flights to Mauritius - just eat Malteasers
How to make him gasp in excitement about your new haircut
Boost your IQ by eating Malteasers
Underwear that flatters girls who weigh over seven stone
Money-off vouchers at Primark - open this email now!
Win £20,000 by eating Malteasers
Britney Spears shows us her cellulite
Sorry to contact you out of the blue, but I think you're beautiful - even without make-up

I think I've found my calling... I'm off.

Hair today...?

So I think I may be hungover again. There's something about book club that makes me suck up wine like a knackered camel at an oasis. I don't think I actually drank that much last night but certainly my contributions to our long-awaited conversation about Alistair Campbell's gripping Blair diaries were less meaningful and succinct than I had anticipated. Shame.

I was also distracted by Charlotte's blissful 15 month old daughter, Emily, who had a cold which was brilliant as it meant she couldn't sleep and was allowed to come back downstairs after dinner to entertain us all (and distract us from Alistair). She sat on Charlotte's lap, facing out and staring at us with mesmerising eyes the size of tennis balls, and we played her new favourite game, Hey Pesto, which involved putting her toy rabbit in an empty cardboard brownie box, methodically shutting the lid, then opening the lid and taking out the rabbit. We did this perhaps thirty five times and then we played pass the spoon. Don't ask.

I am panicking because I think the Republicans are going to win the election in the States, thanks to Sarah 'Vlad the Im' Palin. Obama's not helping by calling her a pig though.

And now it's Thursday. This week has flown by in a flurry of social engagements and vanity. After a tricky day yesterday, I tried to alter my hair this morning by blow drying it while hanging my head upside down - I thought this might add some kookiness and 'lift' but instead it looks like I've rubbed it all over with gorse. I may have to start wearing more hats until it grows. Or perhaps I should settle this once and for all and go for a skinhead. Thoughts welcome...

Life through a lens

So you know how it is when you spend a small fortune on some new glasses, even though you're massively in debt and lunch at Pret a Manger is a hugely extravagant treat, and then you get up a bit earlier than normal and wash your hair and put on your make-up because you know that you're going to be looking at yourself in the mirror in Specsavers and you don't want to vomit in public, and you're a bit nervous because you bought the glasses about a fortnight ago and they're normally ready in 24 hours but because you've got such a stupid astigmatism, they take several thousand working weeks and now they're finally ready but it was so long ago since you tried them on that you can't remember what they're like and you're not sure you're going to like them because maybe you allowed your ego to be massaged by the surprisingly persuasive sales assistant, which you never ever allow to happen, and then you arrive at Specsavers and they pull out your new frames and you put them on and they seem black and fifties and cool just like you remembered but then you look in the mirror and with your blonde hair you look like that awful TV presenter on Channel 4 who's apparently South African even though I thought she was American, and she always snarls at all her makeover victims that they've been so irresponsible for sunbathing for ten minutes in the early Eighties or having two puffs on a cigarette when they were fifteen, and that they've consequently destroyed any chance they had of being remotely attractive without surgery, because of course she's never done anything as unhealthy as stand in a shop that was selling Silk Cut and if the sun comes out she zips herself into a special black-out vacuum container and remains there until dusk?

Well, that's what happened to me this morning, and then I got into work and someone did that thing when they don't know if they like something so instead of saying 'Nice skirt' or whatever, they just state the obvious, i.e. 'Morning Jane... New glasses...' and I said 'Yes' and they think they've got points just for being observant whereas I know for sure that someone only employs that tactic if they don't like what they see. But it doesn't matter because three other people since then have actually said the glasses looked nice, unprompted - one person even said 'Very stylish'. And when I looked in the mirror mid-morning, I realised that the glasses are fine, it's my hair I don't like. I'll keep you posted.

TV tears

As well as malt loaf, baby animals, shopping and taramasalata, I love television. When I was a teenager, it was my lifeline to what I thought was the Real World. When I was in my early twenties, I used it to escape the Real World. When I was in my late twenties, I used it to learn about the Real World. Now I'm in my thirties and I know it's not real, but I still think it's useful and fun and a vital window into the culture that is being fed to our nation and the rest of the globe.

Tonight when I got home, I watched the final of Maestro, having missed the rest of this BBC reality series that has shown celebrities learning to conduct a full orchestra. And although the classical music tradition is elitist and difficult, this was absolutely brilliant. A handful of normal people, famous in the main for something completely unmusical (from cake making to comedy), standing on a podium in front of a stage full of professional musicians, showing the skill, knowledge, coordination, talent, passion and love it takes to make this most complex and valuable of art forms come to life.

Sorry, that wasn't at all funny. Clearly my life isn't all tripping upstairs and becoming entangled in coiffuring equipment. To provide a potential smirk, here is an extract from The Mitfords - a letter Nancy (then 59) wrote to her younger sister Deborah (then 43) in March 1963:
"Dear Miss,
Quelle horrible surprise - a photograph of the Q [Queen] accompanied by a hideous eskimo. I imagine she is in some dread Soviet land, look again, & find that it is Princess Anne."
Made my commute home a little less awful.

NOCD

I like to think of myself as pretty organised. Others might say 'control freak' but, for several reasons, I prefer 'pretty organised'. I make my bed nine mornings out of ten. I do the washing up before I go to sleep if I can. I regularly take my eye make-up off in the evenings. I pay my bills on time. I usually write thank you letters before my self-imposed deadline. I find out ticket onsale dates and get good seats by phoning at 9am. I think ahead; I am a natural planner. I have an impressive range of stationery for every eventuality, including a box of those brass fasteners you put through pieces of paper to allow them to spin around in opposite directions. I have different laundry products for whites, colours, wools and delicates. I am punctual. Things are mostly shipshape.

But behind the tidy facade lies a darker story. I have items on my Things To Do List that haven't moved for years. Currently holding the top spot is 'Have guitar lessons', which has been there since the 1990s. Slightly newer additions that show little sign of shifting are 'Buy stainless steel screws for bathroom shower rack'; 'Give wedding present to Al & Lucy' (married in 2004, gift purchased and wrapped in 2005, still ungiven); and 'I still owe four hours of computer lessons to Dad', dating back several years to when I borrowed some money from them for, I believe, a holiday, and agreed to repay him in iTunes and digital photography uploading tuition. Eek.

But I'm proud to announce that today I was able to cross off something that had been clinging to the list for a very long time: I went to the dry cleaner's. I took my mum's silk scarf that I borrowed for Olivia's Footballers' Wives hen night in 2004. And a cocktail dress that's been sitting in the bottom of my laundry basket since 2006. And the bridesmaid outfit that I wore to Lucy and Jake's wedding in 2003. It's not pleasant, but it must be conceded that if I was a true obsessive compulsive, these things would not have been allowed to fester quite so long. Admit it: I'm not as freakishly organised as I may have seemed. I am, in fact, Normal. Remember I told you.

In other news: I bought another new hairbrush to make up for the rubbish over-priced one I purchased two weeks ago - and then when I was drying my hair after the gym, the new one became stuck. It's one of those round drying brushes and I was trying to do some clever under-spinning thing to make my hair look really shapely and gorgeous, but it backfired and a fair-sized clump of hair became entangled in the cheap bristles, really close to the scalp. I tried to pull it out. I tried to wiggle it out. But quickly it became clear that cutting it out was a very real possibility. Equally clear was the fact that such actions would involve the removal of a mug-sized patch of hair from the right hand side of my head, exactly at the point that the hair meets my face, above my right ear. Inconspicuous it would not be.

I broke out into a nervous sweat, took three deep breaths and realised that I would have to break the problem down into manageable chunks. I pulled out a tiny initial segment, resisting the urge to yelp in agony. Gradually, I was able to free up strand after strand, until only one stubborn tangle remained, double-wound around the brush shaft, now dry, matted and inflexible. I was running late and became ruthless, pulling hard which stretched the skin away from my scalp giving me the appearance of a bizarre Star Trek character. Sexy. Eventually I managed to free myself completely from the instrument of torture, and dried the rest of my hair using traditional, vertical brush strokes. Vidal Sassoon, your crown is safe.

The Day After Yesterday

If I was starting to forget what it is like to be very hungover, today has been an ample recap. I'm really not feeling too hot. And I'm pretty sure I'm not looking too great either, in a thick navy wool socks and white Birkenstock sandals combo; jeans; a thermal top covered in small pictures of woodland items including toadtools, thistles and squirrels; a fantastic cardigan with retro puffed sleeves knitted by my granny before I was born; topped off with no make-up, broken glasses and a scraggly ponytail. That said, when one is properly Hungover, such things as appearance are irrelevant: all that matters is getting through the day without one's head exploding. I met Nessa in the Kennington Park cafe this morning, and we ate a lot of carbs, which helped - but it's now nearly 7pm and I'm still a little shaky.

Last night I went to my friend David's 'First Weekend' (website under construction at time of writing). He is an outstanding chef and, things being what they are, it was brilliant to be able to get dressed up on a Saturday night, head out and meet a nice bunch of new faces while consuming a spectacular selection of the finest "aggressively seasonal" food and wines. We had squid and ceps and prawns as finger food, and two starters, one of which (the crab) was perhaps the highlight of my weekend, a beautifully inventive lamb main course, slightly scarily-scented cheeses, ice cream with almond pesto followed by phallic vanilla biscuits dipped into molten chocolate. By the meal's conclusion, I was starting to regret my outfit choice of a bold horizontally striped dress.

It's been a long time since I've been to an event of this sort without a wingman or wingwoman of any kind, but I think I held up under the harsh anglepoise of nine strangers' first impressions and have been poked on Facebook more than once since my return home, so I'll take that as a compliment. It's always interesting to see how one presents oneself in that kind of situation, since it is about as much of a blank canvas as life ever provides these days. I seem to be fairly confident, which I knew before, but also older and wiser than I expected; a surprisingly authoritative-sounding expert on modern celebrity culture; more accurate about the number of Britons who voted in the last general election than I was made to feel; more blunt than some, fractionally more tolerant of alcohol consumption than others; more internet savvy, more in possession of an iPhone; less wealthy, less married, less together in general; less insecure than some, less secure than others; perhaps less self-satisfied than a few, maybe less pigeon-hole-able, hopefully more hopeful and less pessimistic; less trapped, certainly less certain than some, less serious, less knowledgeable about wines and suspended sevenths than others. Which I suppose makes me equally human.

Along with the crab starter, the other contender for Highlight of my Weekend occurred mid this afternoon, when I slotted the drawers of my Ikea chest back onto their runners, having painted the whole thing white three times yesterday, with a final coat of white-mixed-with-a-soupçon-of-brown (as instructed by Sara) and then finished it off today with two applications of Briwax which have given it a lovely dull, matt sheen. Many thanks to My Little Helper Emily, who came to stay on Friday night for TV and chatting and world setting-to-rights, and then strangely and lovelyly volunteered to assist with the painting on Saturday morning.

Now I am satisfying the emotional neediness of my hangover by giving in to every craving, and have been lying on the sofa eating Penguins, drinking milk and taking a trip down Aural Memory Lane by listening to the favourite pieces my choir has sung over the past few years, singing along in a rusty alto to the certain joy of my above and below neighbours, although I feel like the saxophone habits of the latter and the stentorian bedroom antics of the former mean that I can justifiably get away with murdering Bach cantatas and The Dream of Gerontius for a while longer. Next: last night's X Factor.

Handy Hint

I try to ensure that reading LLFF is a valuable experience for all my Faithful. Whether I brighten your day by allowing you the opportunity to laugh at my thrilling antics, or help you achieve a cathartic calm by detailing my commute, I always aim for my blog to add something extra to my readers' lives.

Thus I sincerely hope that the top tip that follows below (perhaps the first of a series) will enlighten and improve your collective existence.

As many of you will already know, deodorant is extremely useful, preventing many an embarrassing damp patch or unpleasant odour. But did you know that it is not quite so useful if inadvertently placed in the eye? I am sure all of us have, at times, wondered what would happen if one put deodorant in one's eye, so I am confident that you will be relieved that I was able to perform the heavy work on your behalf.

My findings are as follows: do not, and I repeat, do not, apply roll-on deodorant to your underarm area, accidentally touch it and then accidentally but unknowingly touch that same finger to your left eye. Or, in fact, right eye. [NB: I didn't test the right, but I suspect the results may be comparable.] At approximately 08:13 this morning, I noticed an unpleasant irritation in my eye area. I thought that perhaps an eyelash or similar foreign object had become trapped between ball and lid, but careful lifting of said lid (which, I later realised, ensured that further smears of deodorant entered my visual zone) revealed nothing. After a few seconds further had elapsed, the sensation became squeaky, dry, bloodshot and extremely uncomfortable. And thus it has remained for the past three hours.

So. Dove deodorant in eyes. To be avoided. Perhaps other brands may react differently but I have a hunch the risk will be similar in all cases.

Here endeth the handy hint. You're welcome.

Love is in the air

I have found a rebound relationship. He's black, smooth, fashionable, incredibly handy in a crisis, reliable, cutting edge, everyone who meets him wants to touch him, and he comes with me everywhere. His name? Phone. iPhone.

Much as I'd love to satisfy female stereotypes and pretend that I can't set a VHS to record and don't know how to change the timer on my boiler so that my man can have his Knight In Shining Armour moments, the fact is that I'm a gadget fan through and through. Since I picked up my new handset on Monday, I've been unable to get to sleep before 1am, so busy have I been with rearranging the icons on my phone into order of usage frequency and downloading new applications from iTunes so that I can check the London Underground lines' status with a single click, or turn the whole screen white to use it as a torch. By the middle of next week, I'm hoping to have programmed it to answer my work phone and send emails so that I no longer have to go into the office at all.

I'm still limping, although today I am wearing a black skirt, black tights and black shoes (as well as some items on my top half), and I positioned my bandage over the tights so that I could remove it if necessary. I thought it looked quite jaunty and I was proved right when someone by the lift said it looked like I was wearing one spat. That's me, a forgetful twenties gangster with a shiny new phone. Hooray.

A surprise, a bandage and another close encounter

Last night I arrived back home just before midnight, having consumed a bit of wine but not enough to blur my judgment or my vision. I put my key in the lock, turned it, and opened the door a few inches. Immediately, with the certainty that one has when one is the only person who is ever in one's house, I knew that something was awry. My doormat had moved.

I was absolutely sure that I hadn't moved it as my OCD would prevent me from leaving the house without it in position. So the first explanation offered to me by my brain was that someone with a key or a skeleton copy had entered my flat, moved my doormat and then relocked the door. I was unclear which side of the door they now were on. With caution and my heart performing a lively celidh, I opened my front door a few inches further. Ahead of me was a dark and unfamiliar shadow. I prepared to yell. And then I laughed. Because it was a bay tree.

The donor was my lovely dad who, knowing I was hankering after one, had been in the vicinity of my flat, found a healthy looking specimen at the garden centre, driven it over, let himself in with his key and left it in the middle of my hall, positioned on the doormat so as not to soil my carpet with... soil. It was an adorable surprise, and a perfect one. It might not have been so perfect if I'd died of shock, or given it a rusty mawashi geri (aka a vigorous roundhouse kick from my karate days) - but fortunately, things worked out as planned. It's nice when that happens, isn't it.

In other news, my hobble was still rather too pronounced this morning, so I was advised to visit the nurse in our office building. She examined my (now swollen) foot, diagnosed me with either a sprained or torn ligament over the cuboid bone, applied some arnica, wrapped it in a large bandage, told me to keep it elevated if possible and take 400mg of ibuprofen three times a day for the next three days. Livid. I've been waiting all my life for an excuse to remain horizontal and not exercise, and now one comes along less than three weeks before I have to run 10 kilometers. It's not that I won't be able to complete the run as I should be back on track by then, but I was hoping to up my pace a tad during training, and that now looks unlikely. Still, at least I have a dramatic-sounding excuse.

Finally, a big shout (of rage) out to the tattooed elderly gentleman on the Northern Line this evening who sat down, ate a bag of Quavers, calmly and deliberately placed the empty packet on the floor by his feet, and disembarked shortly afterwards. Every fibre in my being wanted to shout after him that he'd forgotten something as he walked off, but I couldn't get up the nerve. Perhaps I was too weak as a result of my foot injury. Once he'd gone, I admitted to myself that the charitable thing to do now would be to pick up the empty packet and throw it in a bin above ground. I was all set to carry out this selfless act when a woman took the vacated seat and put her heavy rucksack on the crisp packet, preventing me from performing my good deed. So I left having done nothing. Bloody hell, littering drives me spastic. I just finished reading a fascinating article in Prospect about how, by enforcing everything with rules, Big Government basically ensures that people develop no moral values of their own, and that if there isn't a sign or a law telling them what to do or not to do, people have no obligation to do anything. I was nodding frantically and making 'Mmm' noises when I was reading it on the way to work this morning, so wholeheartedly did I agree. I freaking wish we all had some greater sense of personal responsibility and civic pride. Maybe 2012 will start the ball rolling. We live in hope.

Good news!

I am very excited. There has been a new development in my life and I am extremely happy about it.

Possible options:
1. Romance blossoming
2. New career opportunity
3. Painless liposuction offered free of charge by kindly doctor
4. Suddenly-discovered ability to walk in high heels without discomfort
5. Lottery win despite not having purchased ticket
6. Book deal despite not having sent manuscript to anyone
7. Unexpectedly asked to play leading role in excellent new film
8. Unexpected and vast inheritance from recently deceased and, until now, unknown relative
9. Unexpected invitation to holiday in Mauritius, all expenses paid

All possibilities, yes. But not realites just yet. Instead, the truth is thus: I have a running injury, and I have never felt more glamorous.

When I was jogging near Charlie's on Saturday morning, the terrain was mostly grassy instead of the concrete or treadmill surface to which I am accustomed. Later in the afternoon, the outside edge of my left foot started aching quite badly. I rested it on Sunday and Monday, and last night, went for my 9km circuit after work, last completed about 10 days earlier. Approximately half way through the course, somewhere near Lambeth Bridge, my foot started to be slightly uncomfortable, but I pushed on and made it back, an entire minute faster than last time. By the time I'd showered, I was hobbling like a seasoned sufferer of rheumatoid arthritis. On arriving home, I was in agony. And this morning, I was forced to wear sensible shoes rather than the glamorous high heels I was planning to don for my evening out tonight.

But: I'm happy as Larry. This is my first ever sporting injury and I am delighted. Of course, last night, when I was hobbling from the gym to the tube, wincing with every step, I just looked like a curvy, red-faced girl who was suffering from bad blisters caused by unsuitable shoes. I was tempted to change back into my damp gym kit to prove that my lameness had been brought on by a vigorous, high-octane exercise regime and not through the lack of support in my cheap Barratts slip-ons, but managed to resist the urge. Today I am still hobbling with pride, fully aware that a Nurofen would hit this discomfort on the head but keen to revel in the pain brought on by my healthy lifestyle. I am exaggerating the limp as far as possible and now look like a cross between post-marathon Paula Radcliffe and Quasimodo, but still sexy in an understated way. Girls, if you didn't envy me already, you should now.

Volume knobs

It's been a while since I've ranted about the tube, but rest assured, the grapes of wrath are still flourishing, usually on a twice daily basis. My current bête noir(e?) is a group I have classified as Voluntary Yellers. Of course, it is an accepted fact among all but the most moronic of Britons that anyone who raises their voice above a whisper on any form of public transport should be forcibly ejected immediately and, if possible, muted permanently as punishment. In spite of this, there are still some travelers who find it difficult to monitor their personal volume, who are forced by virtue of rush hour to stand millimeters from their companion but are nonetheless unable to regulate their voice to a reasonable level. These are the Involuntary Yellers, and I'm afraid I must confess that on this subject I cannot be entirely objective: my dear papa has been a lifelong member of the IYs and thus I am choosing not to attack this group. For now.

The Voluntary Yellers are something else altogether. These are people who kindly and completely unnecessarily choose to project their fascinating conversations across the tube or bus for the listening pleasure of anyone in a three mile radius. On three occasions in the past week, I have had to bear the irritation of two or more people who have chosen to sit, not in adjacent seats in a vacant carriage, but across an aisle from each other, and who conduct their conversation at levels loud enough to cause tinnitus. Just to ice my bigot cake, it has appeared to me that the more inane the topic of discussion and the more grating the accents of these individuals, the louder their voices. South Africans and Irish tube users seem particularly un-self-aware, although predictably the worst culprits are our friends from across the pond.

From a psychological standpoint, I can understand the power-wielding rush of knowing other people are listening to what you're spouting off about - but there's something tragically teenagerish about it all, an insecurity that compels individuals who feel unheard in the rest of their lives to inflict themselves on powerless commuters instead. On paper, I'm tolerant. But in practice, I glower. And then I huff. And then I pointedly insert my iPod headphones. Petty acts of pointed revenge, of course, make no difference - if anything, it gives their behaviour recognition, thus encouraging its continuation - but I don't have time to counsel them into maturity on the Northern Line. Instead, I must suffer the Voluntary Yellers in silence and hope that they eventually come to blush at their lack of courtesy.

On another note, here are three things I love:
1. My new Vacuvin. Meh, it's impossible to be consistently liberal.
2. Prospect magazine. I've just received my second trial issue and I'm still hooked.
3. Charlie's story last Saturday about her terrible shiny lime green bridesmaid's dress with its unsightly brown stain on the rear. Her explanation: she sat in paté.