Trying to blog, but not being very good at it.

I started out with such high hopes for my blog, I planned to post regularly, and hopefully interestingly, but it has somewhat fallen by the wayside. I think part of the problem is my latent apathy and the other part is that I’m just not very good at talking about myself. I really want to write witty, insightful and funny posts about love, life and the perils of riding a moped. But, in the end I don’t for fear that someone in my life outside in the real world might read it and being able to decipher the subtext just enough to know something I had chosen not to tell them.

I’m not the sort of person that will tweet about having a bad day, or when someone has upset me. Believe me, I want to, but I also don’t want to seem self-indulgent or in need of gratification, besides, my stiff upper lip kicks in. I just can’t do it, there’s a fine line between the need to get something off your chest and writing a woe is me tweet, and sitting there waiting for the @ to flood in telling you how great you are, there’s an odd vanity in it all.

Perhaps it would be good for me though, to just put it out there and to hell with who knows, it’ll be someone’s gossip for a few days and then it’ll just be nothing.  Also, perhaps I’m just kidding myself and no one will care anyway. Hell, I’ve been out with a virgin and a magician so my other dating disasters pale in comparison.

I will try, or at least blog more about a variety of things until I find my niche.  If you do want to subscribe to an amazing blog then check out Katie Khan’s brilliant www.awkwardsituationsforgirls.com

A Whiter Shade of Pale

When I got back from Italy last week a friend at work said to me, before even asking how my holiday was, “Oh you haven’t gotten any colour.” As if the only reason to go away was to pick up a suntan – forget catching up with a good friend, eating great food or reading a good book. For him, it was solely about getting a tan.  And so, it occurred to me that for many people the presence of a good (or even bad) tan is synonymous with having had a good holiday. Whilst, I gauge my holiday on the number of books read (5), fish seen snorkeling (11) or good food consumed (too much).

His comment, made me think just how much people pride themselves on a good tan these days. Whereas years ago it was a sign of being poor, only people who worked outside had a tan and the paler your skin the richer and more well to do you were.  From about April to September every year, we are bombarded with adverts for self tanning products. Magazines devote pages to ‘perfect summer skin’ and Boots slap a 3for2 offer on St Tropez.

For a long time, I listened to the adverts, read the magazines, exfoliated, moisturised, applied fake tan, smelt like biscuits and scrubbed my orange hands with nail polish remover. And then, praise the lord, the rise of the Oompa Loompa. The Jordan wannabes with their tangerine tan and fake eyelashes stormed the nation and I no longer had the desire to be bronzed.  I embraced my pale skin because it made me different, it made me unique in a sea of fake baked clones.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a good tan looks lovely on some people.  My friend, who I was on holiday with, is half Burmese and tans in seconds and goes a colour that would make most people explode with jealousy. But I don’t tan, I look awful in yellow and spend the whole summer coated in a light film of Ambre Solaire.

In the end, it’s about choice and that the decision to remain pale shouldn’t be met with a pitying look and a consolatory pat on the arm. So here I am, back from holiday with a pale girl’s tan. Freckles.

5 Things I Have Learnt From Burlesque

1. If you have been denied an audition at your dream dance club, pick up a tray and waitress. You will not get escorted off the premises on the contrary they will love your spunky attitude

2. Cam Gigandet looks better in eyeliner than you

3. Cher is now approximately 54% Silicon, 23% Botox and 14% Muppet and 9% Sequins

4. Stanley Tucci is your go to guy to play “Fabulous Gay Mentor”

5. Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows are still mesmerising

5 Things I Have Learnt From Taken

1. Do not let an attractive French boy you meet in a taxi queue know where you live

2. If you forget step one, make sure your Dad is either…

a) Liam Nesson

b) An ex spy

c) Both

3. When Liam Neeson tells you he will find you and kill you, believe him*

4. When chasing a boat along the Seine, make sure you steal an Audi, they are very fast and have excellent gears

5. Holly Valance is still getting work

 

*note to self, don’t piss off Liam Neeson

Healthy but yummy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

My sister in law found this recipe in a magazine and asked me to make a batch for my niece, and as I said I would blog about food and baking I decided to document the whole trial.  The cookies were very easy to make and came out really tasty, so they are certainly something I would bake again.

Ingredients:

140g (5oz)Rolled Oats

120g (4oz) Wholemeal Flour (or Spelt Flour)

100g (3½oz) Raisins

60g (2oz) Bittersweet Chocolate Chips

100g (3½oz) Light Brown Sugar

½tsp Baking Powder

1tsp Cinnamon

½tsp Nutmeg

A pinch of Salt

6tbsp Rapeseed Oil

60g (2oz) Sweet Potato Puree

2 large Egg Whites

2tsp Vanilla Extract

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180º and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper

2. Place all the dry ingredients in to a bowl

3. Put rapeseed oil and light brown sugar in a large mixing bowl and combine well

4. Add all remaining wet ingredients

5. Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir well

6. Place dessert spoon sized amounts of dough on to the baking sheet, leaving an inch in between each cookie, and flatten with a fork

7. Baking in the oven for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges. Once cooked, place the cookies on a wire rack to cool completely

8. Eat

Weekly Round Up

I’ve been thinking about doing a weekly, or possibly fortnightly blog post round up the best things I’ve been sent or seen on the internet. This is tricky, because everyone is different and what I find interesting you might not. Anyway, here’s my first stab (some of these I actually saw almost two weeks ago)…

Top 3 Videos

Alan Rickman’s best movie insults: http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/02/25/alan-rickman-villains-insults/

Predator, the musical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlicWUDf5MM (via @DarkBunnyTees)

I can’t not laugh when I watch this, partly because she reminds me of my Goddaughter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cds7lSHawAw

As it’s the Oscars, here are some related posts

I’m a big lego fan, I had both regular lego and technic lego growing up, so this is all kinds of awesome http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/8288596/Oscar-Best-Picture-2011-nominated-films-recreated-using-Lego-bricks-by-Alex-Eylar.html

Don’t know what to eat when reviewing the Oscar best picture nominees? Well then this will help http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/56655413.html

EW rounds up the “worst” winners of the Best Picture award http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20311937_20465545,00.html

I enjoyed Black Swan for the most part and think that both Natatlie Portman and Barbara Hershey we’re brilliant (Hershey was robbed, she should have gotten a nomination), but at times I thought it was overwrought and a little ridiculous. Plus I guessed the ending about halfway through.  Is it not just Showgirls in tutus?! http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/12/black_swan_showgirls_slideshow.html

Why type it, when you can use a chart?

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2090#comic (via @spiffykates)

http://mashable.com/2011/02/25/angry-birds/

Sometimes a girl just doesn’t have time to pop to the hairdresser…

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20447742_20884509,00.html

And if you missed it in my Twitter timeline, this is geek heaven

http://www.geekworldordersite.com/blog/2011/02/wolverine-or-2-batman/

Has the rom-com killed romance?

 

I have to admit something. I love a good rom-com; they’re my guilty pleasure. Through all my cynicism and sarcasm, secretly, I’d love a man to hold a boombox over his head, tell me that I complete him, bring me flours*, race across town at midnight to tell me he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, or sweep me off my feet at work and carry me out.

The rom-com is simple. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl (or in those films that are trying to be different girl loses boy), boy makes a rather overblown romantic gesture or chases down the object of his affection and wins back the girl’s heart and they live happily ever after.

The problem is that nowadays the rom-com has become so formulaic and the “grand gesture” often so ridiculous that I think it may have killed real life romance.  Has the deluge of romantic comedies, good and bad, in the last 5 years made us expect too much?   If the date isn’t perfect or the Valentines gift not romantic enough are we too quick to dismiss it?  As Carrie Bradshaw once said “Do we need drama to make a relationship work?” Perhaps what she should have asked is “Has Hollywood corrupted our view of real romance?”

When a rom-com get’s it right it’s wonderful. You go out of the cinema or turn off the TV with a renewed sense of romance, you know your Mr Right is out there somewhere and when you meet, it will feel like all your Christmases have come at once. But, when they get it wrong you find yourself lamenting your single status, laughing at the awful plotlines and thinking… “If that’s what romance is, well, then it’s truly dead.”

In short, don’t look to Hollywood for real romance. Look closer to home and you’ll find it’s out there and it’s in the little things; a note hidden in the book you’re reading, a bunch of flowers on a rainy Tuesday, being told you look pretty when you feel anything but and yes, sometimes, once in a blue moon with an overblown gesture that stops just short of toe-curling