Look into each others eyes by that bush

So basically I'm engaged!

It’s been quite a while since it happened...June....and I've had writer’s block ever since. In the beginning I was obsessed. All I could do was read wedding blogs and wedding magazines. I bought a scrap book so I could create mood boards. I started a pinterest so I could create an ONLINE mood board. I learned the names of the best dress designers. I found out that lace was actually quite expensive. Who knew?

But mainly it was the wedding blogs I spent my time looking at. I'm only now just coming out of the wedding blog funk.   I didn’t even know that wedding blogs existed before but there are blogs on everything. Dan read a beard blog yesterday and learned the best way to keep it trim. A BEARD BLOG. About BEARDS.

Maybe he’ll join a beard club now. I heard about them. Loads of men who have beards meet up and talk about their beards.

Anyways, who knew there were SO MANY wedding blogs? At first it was fascinating and I read loads of them. They’re basically a website that mainly features “real weddings”. Which is nice cos you think...oh great that wedding looks like it might have been cheap...I’ll copy! The “real weddings” are sent in by fancy pants photographers who charge FIFTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS to take photos of your special day. The blogger will say hi, isn’t this a nice wedding, doesn’t she have a nice veil...and then it’ll have all the photos with little quotes from the bride. After a while you think...err hello Mrs blogger you’re not doing ANY work and also your blog is full of typos and you don’t have a real job and you make money from your blog.

The blog will also have a random article every now and then about abortions or debt management and you think...GET OUT OF HERE it’s like when there’s an article about forced marriage in Marie Clair and you have to skip it cos you’re reading Marie Clair for the clothes, not the political messages. Actually, I think I only read Marie Clair once. It DID have an article about forced marriages though. you know what I'm talking about. This reminds me of the  one and only time I ever watched Charmed and the main character was chatting about spells or something while putting some broccoli in a Tupperware and then microwaving it. I mentioned it to Hen one time and that was the only ever episode of Charmed that SHE had seen! Good times.

So yeah..the blog. Sometimes they also feature engagement shoots. Like that's a thing. an engagement shoot. People PAY a photographer to take photos of them in their normal clothes frolicking on the beach or a cliff. They're so cheesey and rank. But then I hate wedding photos altogether really so maybe I'm not a good litmus test.

Is that the right use of “litmus test” ?

The thing is....checking out those blogs every day started getting to be quite a lot to keep on top of. Like a chore. And then I started realising that the longer you spend looking at them, eventually the same cycle of weddings passes before your eyes. Country wedding with bunting. Art deco wedding with fur stole. Fancy hotel wedding. East London trendy wedding. Country wedding with bunting. Art deco wedding with fur stole.

And you start to feel sick every time someone’s got a Jenny Packham dress. Which, because of all my obsession and research I KNOW they cost 3 fucking grand.

And you stop coveting everyone else’s wedding and think...hey MINE is the best. And isn’t that the most important lesson of all?

Also...if one more person asks me if I'm a “bridezilla” I'm going to eat them.

Ciao!

Oh my. Grey is spelled with an E!

Well, people; never say I’m not one to jump on a bandwagon. Because I am. Although I often do it unwittingly. Which makes me think I’m just really in touch with the masses quite psychically. I'm not even trying! Or maybe I'm a follower. Who knows and who cares right? (I'm not a follower damn you!)

What I'm trying to get at is that I have read ALL THREE 50 shades books. But when I started, I'd never heard of them. I was tricked! 

But what are these books I hear you cry!

Well...do you remember when I wrote a blog about twilight? I read all the books and wrote a very angry blog about how much I hated all the characters and the plot and how I had done nothing but read them for 2 weeks and was obsessed, but that I categorically HATED them. Well it's like that. On acid. And with porn.

The 50 shades trilogy is a set of books that have taken the world by storm. The Scottish author used to write a blog which was twilight fan fic. Fan fic being the literary equivalent of dragons and swords type role play in the forest. You take a book you love and you write stories with the same themes and characters and stuff. So the author was writing this blog and it got really popular and then it got published as an E book and then it got published as a book and everyone all over the world is reading it and it tops all the best seller lists and they're making a film of it.

So what's good about it?

Well I really enjoy the twilight refs. Which is wierd seeing as I hated twilight. Or did I? I can't decide. I defo hated the main characters.

Twilight is about Edward and Bella. Bella is a self sacrificing goody goody and she falls in love with Edward who is a broody mysterious vampire type person who is really controlling and always fretting for bella’s safety.

They live in Washington state.

Their love knows no bounds.

In 50 shades the main character, Anastasia is a self sacrificing goody goody who falls in love with Christian who is a brooding, mysterious sexy freaky sadism and masochism sex addict who is really controlling and frets about  Anastasia’s safety.

They live in Washington state.

Their love knows no bounds.

Brilliant!

The making him a controlling fucked up bondage weirdo is great and I feel like the book kind of makes fun of itself in this way.

Just about.

And that's it!

There's NOTHING else to like.

The first thing that hit me straight away was how awkward the writing was. It reminded me of something. I quickly realised that it reminded me of my own writing as a teenager when I was really into sweet valley high and I wrote all my stories about teenagers in high school living in California. My own fan fic I suppose. Anyways, as a middle class English girl, I knew all the right language to use to make it Americanised, but it didn’t sound quite right. Like I could hear my own English accent saying the words. That's how I felt about 50 shades. Yeah she says “beet” instead of beetroot but I can hear it feels fake. Also, she makes loads of mistakes and says she's going out to get “trashed” and reaches for the “duvet”. COME ON DO YOUR RESEARCH!.

The dialogue is really clunky too. The main characters contstantly call each other "Mr Grey" and "Ms Steele". Ok maybe in real life you might have an in joke and do it occaisionally. But not ALL the time!

So the couple embark on this weirdo relationship where he wants to spank her all the time and she likes it, kind of and they have sex ALL THE TIME. She gives him a Blow Jay and 2 seconds later he flips her over and takes her roughly from behind. Then they go and have breakfast and have sex on the breakfast bar and then they go out on the boat and have sex in the cabin and then they go home and have sex in a car park and then they have sex in is kinky playroom and then sex again in the middle of the night when someone needs a wee. RIDICULOUS. Is he a sex superhero?

Before Anastasia meets MR CHRISTIAN GREY in his POWERFUL OFFICE, she is a shy, clumsy dork with bad dress sense and no money and she's a virgin who’s only had 2 snogs and apparently NEVER pleasured herself either. And she's 22. Yeah right. Anyways....she transforms into an assertive, sexily dressed and confident wonder woman by the 3^rd book (another good twilight link really, cos in twilight bella becomes a vampire and becomes really strong but enough about that). But along the way she has a sexual awakening and we’re party to EVERY thought she has. Every time any man looks her at her she blushes. If I had a drink, at one twitter friend’s suggestion, every time she “blushes furiously” or a slow blush creeps across her face, I'd have been trashed for the whole 2 weeks. She also says “oh my” a lot. Every time they do ANYTHING sexy she says to herself "oh my". In italics.What a loser.

This is one of the author’s greatest flaws. Repetition (says me who says anyways 15 times per blog..but...anyways). She's so bad for it. Ana constantly is blushing, saying oh my and biting her lip. Christian’s eyes are constantly darkening. She’ll use the same word three times in a sentence and she even repeats sentences.

It makes me think that she took the blog...used the find command on word and changed the names and then just published it. Without checking the writing or seeing if it flowed well. It has the feel of a book that was published in a rush because the author died and the family won't let the editors change a thing (hello girl with the dragon tattoo books, I'm talking to you).

But what about Christian? He's a massive fucking bastard who likes to hurt women. And control then and tell them what to eat and what to say and how to say it. If he asks Ana to do something and she says no I don’t want to, he tells her he wants to beat the shit out of her. If she forgets to eat lunch, he tells her she must obey him.

What gets me the most about this book is that all over the internet you hear that it’s a feminist book. That it’s empowering to women. What? Because it has a lot of sex in it? So what. So does porn but that's not empowering. So some dork is having loads of rampant sex? I don’t give a shit. Because this book is actually promoting obeying your man. Sure sure, in the 3^rd book SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT they get married and there's a small reference to the fact that she says she won't obey him in the vows. It’s so inconsequential because she DOES obey him all the time. She rebels every now and then but she moves in with him. She marries him after only a month of going out. And she wears all the clothes he buys for her, and eats the food he makes her eat. He BUYS the company she works for so he can give her an undeserved promotion and she goes along with after a small fight. He MAKES her change her name to his even though she doesn’t want to. He fucking BEATS her for fun. This book is anti feminist it’s just unreal. I can't understand how anyone can say it’s empowering. And the fact that anyone could find the book arousing and sexy and an escape from their daily grind makes me so confused. I was hysterically laughing at the sex scenes at first. Then I would read them stony faced and bored and eventually I just skipped them all. It’s too much, man. They're badly written and laughable, with stupid language like “he touched me..there!” and “I exploded around him into a million pieces just as he found his own release”. Just say you both came OK?

But worse of all..the worst possible crime is that Ana calls her vagina her “sex”. And I just can't get past that. No matter what you say. 

Souper weather for a bra top!

A few months ago I wrote a blog about how it was SUMMER! Obviously it wasn’t. About a week after that it started raining. And raining. And raining.

Every day it rained. I was so bloody depressed and damp and cold and my handbag was super heavy cos I had to carry around my umbrella all the time.

Then it was hot. Really hot. We all got tans. And sweated. And bought new sandals. And got sunburn. And said “wow, it’s like august!” and “wow, it’s like abroad!”. And anybody who went on holiday to Turkey that week when it was hot was totally gutted.

Then the rains came back.

Now it’s muggy.

What an ordeal!

But it’s not like this doesn’t happen every year. The weather in Britain is so ridiculous, but we’re used to it. Last year I wore summer clothes all of May April and June. It was a mixed bag in July and I wore tights for the whole of August. It’s totes depresso and it’s annoying but it shouldn’t be.

My bug bear, really, is that even though the weather is shit and unpredictable and cold basically all summer EVERY year.....the shops REFUSE to accept it. And this makes things hard for us. What I mean is that clothes designers and clothes shops ONLY stock summer clothes in summer. And they're so lovely and tempting so as soon as there’s a nice day you nip to H and M and buy some shorts and a boob tube and run to New Look for a pair of wedges and then they sit in your cupboard untouched for maybe a month. Now that FESTIVAL FASHION is in, you can probably buy a parka and some weird “fashion” willies but that's about it. And you don’t want to go to work looking like you're off to Glastonbury. In my case that means drawing a lightning bolt on my face and a leotard anyways. Totes inappropes.

Actually..a little aside about shops stocking clothes in the FESTIVAL FASHION section. I hate it. Don’t tell me how to dress at a festival. The whole point about festivals is that you go mad and let your imagination run wild. At a particular festival, you’ll notice trends, like that year everyone was into cowboy hats. Normal fashion rules go out the window and you can literally walk around in tights and sequin knickers with a jumper and an admiral’s hat on and feel like the coolest chick in town. It is NOT about going to Topshop and picking out an outfit that was spotted on Daisy Lowe LAST YEAR at Coachella and recreated. SO FUCK OFF DAISY LOWE. Not really, it’s not her fault and I like her bum. But you know what I mean.

Anyways, back to the shops being dicks.

Shops need to get wise to the fact that the weather is rubbish and stop convincing us that we can wear bra tops and knicker shorts all summer.

But you can always count on British girls to keep it real. They WILL wear knicker shorts. But with tights and DMs and a massive cardi over the bra top. Actually...no one would actually wear a bra top with knickershorts. It’s like that old wise saying....”tits OR legs...never both.” (this opinion was brought to you courtesy of @realslimjaney). but what I'm trying to say is that we all have to adapt these fashions that are foisted upon us by shops that think they have to stock the sort of clothes you wear on holiday in Arizona. I don’t know why I picked Arizona but I know it’s pretty hot there. I saw a film once called Bully. It was really good and gory and horrific and it was American and it was summer and there was a girl in it who had on hotpants that were so short they showed the cheeks of her bum and a boob tube so skimpy, she had top cleavage AND under cleavage. I imagine that's how they dress in Arizona. NOT LONDON EVER.

When you’re in a hot country, you can get away with dressing skimpily. What is a very short skirt here, isn’t considered too short in the med, for example. Cos your legs are so boiling, you don’t have a choice. SHOPS NEED TO GET WISE.

But it’s not just clothes shops. It’s food shops too. Do you know, that on the 1^st of May ALL the shops stopped stocking soup? That's not really true. But the marksys in Hammersmith did. And yesterday I went to sainsos and they only had 2 flavours. I NEED SOUP I'm COLD AND WET. Stop making me salad all day. I love salad as much as the next person but sometimes I need a winter warmer in summer. BECAUSE IT IS RANIING AND I'm WEARING MY WINTER COAT.

Also, can offices stop thinking they need air conditioning? This is not the south of France. I'm not hot. Stop being an idiot.

And there you have it. I'm putting the world to rights once more cos shops and offices are idiots in denial.

Donde Este Barcelona?

So me and my friends went to Barcelona for a long weekend and I thought I'd write a review for any budding minibreak weekenders. I'd actually been before with Hen a couple of years ago. It was my birthday and we went for 2 nights. It was a really fun trip and eventful. The morning we left, we realised that our Ryan air flight was NOT flying to Barcelona, but to some shitmuncher town a 2 hour coach ride away. Probably as disappointing as a foreigner booking a flight to “London southend”. Anyways, it meant that with all the travel time, we got to Barcelona at about 9pm Friday and left 9am Sunday. But we managed to wonder about drunk for enough time and had a hurried pit stop to the massive cathedral thing that's been built for the last 150 years. Took a photo and scrammed. We were really into drawing on our faces in those days too. The photos are pretty hilair.

Anyways that was then and this is now. This time it was my good friend Chris’s birthday, the first of the group to turn 30 really. Wow. And on this trip, we had 4 full days and nights to absorb the city and do cultural things. And there were NINE of us. And we stayed in a fancy apartment instead of a grotty hostel. FANCY! and the sign of getting older. I might have to go to Reykjavik soon and just rock up in a minidress, a fur coat and a smile and see what happens. To prove I'm not old yet.  But I digress. 2 of the group could speak Spanish and decipher the menus and pint us in the general direction of good food and wine. Cos that's really I wasn’t on holiday. With maybe 3 cultural events so that I deserve to be drunk 100% of the time.

So here are my 5 top observations about Barcelona

1.       Don’t order tapas in large quantities. They will think you’re an idiot.

On the first night we got this really amazing type of tapas called “pinxos”. I knew what it was cos they have it in Brixton. It’s basically bits of food with sticks through them. And you just order it as you go, like at Yo Sushi. We kind of didn’t realise this and tried to order enough for 9 people  to have a full meal in one go and the results were disastrous. No one knew what anything was and I accidentally ate some cheesy fish thinking it was a sausage. But wow oh wow we ate some amazing stuff in there. And the wine came in tumblers which is basically my most favourite thing ever. So European! The highlight was a piece of very rare beef on a piece of toast with some melted roquefort on top. And don’t forget the stick through the middle. SALTY!

2.       Croquetas are NOT potato croquettes

I fell in love with croquetas. I probably said the word at least every 5 minutes. They’re basically these gooey breaded things with ham in them. I was on a strict diet on Barcelona of as much ham and cheese and bread I could eat and at least 4 portions of croquetas every day. And 2 bottles of red wine. Me and Laura split off from the group one day and I was seriously hanging and feeling all the excessive drinking in my soul. So we headed for a quiet square and ordered 2 beers. “no food?” asked the waitress? “non grazziass” I said. Then we decided to order croquetas. And shouted “dos croquetas” across the square in English accents. Then we ate them and looked at the empty plate for about 5 seconds before Laura caught the eye of the waitress and pointed to the empty plate and held up one finger.  No. We weren’t very confident linguists on this trip. In one shop I said “merci” in a perfect French accent by accident before running away in shame.

But...the whole time we were stuffing our faces with these delicious treats, we thought they were potato and we thought they were cheesy. Of which they were really neither. No cheese nor potato features in a croqueta. I guess we just assumed and our tastebuds trusted us wholeheartedly.

3.       You NEVER have to go without beer, even for short walks

Our theory is that they banned 24 hour drinking licences or booze licenses or something. So some clever people decided to just hide picnic coolers all over the city and sell cold cans of people to ANYONE walking past. We NEVER had to go without beer. It was really cool. Leave the apartment to walk one block. Buy a beer for the journey! Brills. On one occasion we paid upfront for 12 beers and then the man ran away and EVEYONE thought he was doing us over. We all started panicking and then he popped up from behind a bin with our drinks. On one night we had been told about a clubnight called “bitch” and we really wanted to go. We were walking from one bar to another discussing that we weren’t really sure what the name of the club was or the address and it wasn’t looking very hopeful, when Laura stopped one of the beer sellers and said clearly and loudly, in a perfect English accent “donday esta BITCH”. He wasn’t very helpful. But that was the highlight of the whole trip. I'm laughing quite hard now even typing.

4.       Spanish people must have amazing metabolisms

We were living opposite a supermarket and the whole place was basically bread, cheese and ham. So much ham. Ham everywhere. And cheese. So much cheese. In chunks as big as me. And ham legs hanging all over the place. it was like that everywhere. And every restaurant had delicious tapas and stuff on the menu. All cheesy and hammy. And fried. And ice cream shops on EVERY street. And weird fast food joints. Lining every street were loads of fast food places selling. Fast food chain specialising in pitta bread. Fast food joint specialising in pasta. Any kind of pasta you like. Fast food joint specialising in eggs. And with ALL this fattening food everywhere you turned, I didn’t spot one fat person. Well obvs there were some fat people but every time they were British, not Spanish. How do they stay so thin? Is it a massive ruse? What would they gain from such a ruse?

5.       Whatever you do..DO NOT ORDER PATATAS BRAVAS

Before this trip, I was trying to recall all the tapas dishes I knew from trips to La Tasca and my previously blurry trip to Spain. All I could come up with was patatas bravas. Which I vaguely recall being potatoes of some kind in a spicy tomato sauce. Or something. But when you order it, it's SO disappointing. It's just chips with spicy ketchup on top. And everywhere we went we kept ordering it. Probably I the hope that we’d just been unluckiy in the last place and maybe THIS eatery would get it right. But no. DON’T ORDER IT.

So there you have it. Barcelona for dummies. Go forth and be merry. By that I obvs mean drunk and incoherent. In an English accent.

Vamenos! 

A trip to the cini

So. Titanic is being re-released in the cinema BUT IN 3D! Wow.
When I was 14 I went and saw it 3 times at the cinema. There are a lot of films I saw 3 times at the cinema. 10 things I hate about you. Never Been Kissed. Err....Star Wars episode 1. There was a particular summer when I had an 8 week cinema pass and I basically went every day. I was really thin that year cos I wouldn’t eat breakfast or lunch, just drink massive pots of coffee and have 2 squares of pick n mix fudge.

Anyways, I saw Titanic 3 times. I was in love with Leo and I had lost and lots of posters and I bought all his videos. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape where he plays a boy with special needs. Gritty. The one where Robert Ne Niro is his dad and or his stepdad and there's a scene where he's having sex with the mum DOGGY STYLE. Rude. I can’t really remember anything else about that film apart from halfway through it cuts to 10 years later and they’ve tried to make him look older but it's really lamo. I've just googled it , it was called This Boy’s Life. It was pretty gritty.  And there was another one called the Basketball Diaries and I THINK Juliet Lewis was in it as a crack whore which is funny cos she was in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape! They’re probably friends. Anyways, in Basketball Diaries I think some boys get sexually abused by their basketball coach and Leonardo Dicaprio had to give some bloke a blowy in a toilet to pay for his drugs. Actually, I might be getting confused with Boogie Nights. But anyways, Basketball Diaries is really....gritty. And the twins from Sweet Valley High are in it and they have a threesome with Leo. That's pretty gritty. Actually it’s disgusting. I don’t understand twin fantasies AT ALL. I don’t have a sister so maybe I just don’t get it. But I don’t want to get naked and have my sister see me do sexy things. It’s like incest. Why is incest ok? It isn’t! Apart from this episode of Midsomer Murders I saw once where there was a brother and sister in love. I felt sorry for them. The whole world was against them and they were driven to murder! And also in these Virginia Andrews books called Flowers in the Attic. They're really good. This brother and sister are locked I an attic for many many years and they end up falling in love and having sex abut it's not their fault ok cos their mum locked them up and they only had each other. And while they live in the attic the sister learns ballet and becomes a world class ballet dancer when they escape and in the end they get married. It’s spanned over 5 books I think. So incest was OK then. And when Dirty Den Jr and Sharon Watts got it on that was OK. Although they weren’t really related cos she was adopted. So sometimes incest is ok and sometimes it isn’t really incest. I think that's what we’ve learned here today.

So back to Titanic and my love for it and Leo.

Seeing the film in the cinny 3 times made me quite obsessed. And on invicta fm they played the single ALL THE TIME but with little snippets from the film all the way through. To really bring the magic into your home. One particular quote was “Last week I was sitting under a bridge and now, here I am, on the greatest ship in the world, having dinner with you fine people”. When I heard those words I could picture him sitting there in his tux while all the snobbos turned their noses up at him.

Other memorable scenes included the one where they have sex in a car (a car on a ship? OUTRAGEOUS!) and it gets all steamy and one them puts their hand on the steamy window. PASSIONATE! That sex scene is so weird and intense. I suppose it’s meant to convey just how much they want and need each other but in fact they look constipated. The scene where her mum is doing up her corset is good too. And SYMBOLIC.

Aside from going to the cinema and seeing it 3 times and having Leo posters and videos, I also got a book all about him and bought the soundtrack. And I would sit in my room listening to the soundtrack and crying. Crying because I wanted to be a famous actress just like Kate Winslet. And she's from Reading! If she could do it, I could do it (in case you were wondering I am NOT now a famous actress). I also cried because I loved him and I wanted him to be mine. Which is really quite pathetic. Do teenagers still do this? I feel like they're all a bit too cool for school and have sex with other instead of pining for movie stars. Although, to be honest, at the time, I think a lot of my peers were having sex with each other and ignoring the film stars. I was a massive Geek and Loser. But who’s laughing now eh? I live in LONDON yeah? LONDINIUM.

But back then I was a massive geek and loser and one day my dad walked into my room to make me hurry up for school and I was crying and listening to Celine Dion very loudly while I stared at a poster of Leo and stroked his face. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? That's the second most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me. The first was when my colleague walked into the work kitchen to find me standing in front of the fridge with the door open, having just dunked a full block of cheese into a large jar of mayo and about to take a bite.

I was very upset that day and needed comfort food.

The thing is about Titanic though, and I think you’ll all agree, is that's it is SHITE. Just a few months after seeing it in the cinema and all the crying etc, it came out on video and I was all excited when I pre-ordered it from Woolworths. By the time it actually arrived, I was now in love with Johnny Depp (and quite handily already had the What’s Eating Gilbert Grape film on video). But I dutifully watched it and wow were those special effects bad. Most of the people on the ship are just CGI’d in and look like puppets! What had I been thinking? How did it win so many Oscars? I was only 14 OK? Of course I thought it was good. But those big wig film dudes should know a shit piece of sentimental, historically inaccurate claptrap when it bites them on the bum. SURELY?

But no no no they didn’t. And now...15 years later..they still haven’t cottoned on and it’s being allowed into the cinema again. In all serious. IS THIS A JOKE? There’s a big billboard for it at Hammersmith tube and every day I see at least 3 people laugh and then take a photo. IT’S A JOKE RIGHT???

That said, I kind of want to go and watch it. Although I hate 3d. And really the only bit where it’ll be worth it is when the ice berg looms up and kills everyone (obligatory joke and spoiling the end of titanic lolz).

Right, well I think I've had my say on the matter. I now have some cheesey mayo dipping to do and a poster to stare at.
 

Summer Time and The Weather is Freezing

It’s SUMMER! For the past week, the sun’s been shining and so you feel like you need to wear sandals and pedal pushers (lol), t shirts and summer cardigans. I’ve been clinging to my favourite woolly cardy though cos it’s actually bloody freezing in the mornings and in the shade and I've felt quite guilty about it. The whole situation has been one confusing mess. There’s this pressure to ENJOY THE SUNSHINE and GO TO THE PARK!!! We did go to the park on Monday for a picnic and a beer before meeting a friend for her birthday drinks. After about 5 seconds I was shivering and literally lying ON my boyfriend to try and get some of his heat. I also have a streaming nose. On the plus side it’s time for summer nails and that's always fun.

Last weekend, my fella went off for some male bonding time with his cuz, and I had the flat to myself. YES! I punched the air when I found out. And I decided to stay in and eat weird noodles and watch the entire final season of Dawson’s Creek. That was quite a marathon. I started to doubt myself though when people were talking about going to beer gardens and walks and tweeted about having sunburned faces. I'm glad I sat on my sofa all day though. I mean, I opened the balcony doors. It was a bit like sitting on a cruise ship. Probably. A little bit about the Dawson’s creek final season.

Basically it was amazing. Because it was so shit. It was really badly written, like the writers were confused and having an argument about where the show should go. One episode it’s going in one direction and then next episode, it’s like a different writer got control and would undo everything. Dawson was barely in it, but that's no bad thing obvs. And some story lines and characters just got forgotten and abandoned with no explanation. It was weird. And traumatic. Cos Joey and pacey got back together again YAY, even though it was really out of the blue and unexpected. And then broke up again, one episode later BOOOO!!!

Then it all sort of came to an end and Joey finally went to Paris and everyone got a sort of happy ending apart from Grams who got breast cancer. Then came the finale. Set 5 years later. Which is just bloody LAZY. Because they knew how they wanted things to go but they weren’t sure how to get there so hey ho magic, it’s 5 years later. So they’re all meant to be 25 but Joey is already a Junior Editor at a major publishing house in New York and drives a really big boring car and wears reading glasses. And she sits around in the evenings drinking half a glass of red wine, editing stuff with her reading glasses on. Oh yeah and her boyfriend is Elton from Clueless. Took me hours to work that one out.

So she finished uni at 22 and in THREE YEARS she has that job. No way it’s not possible. Plus she's going to skip a really close friend’s wedding cos it’s her anniversary with her boyfriend. Not even a wedding anniversary. What a bitch. What a boring bitch.

And Jack McPhee, last seen doing quite badly at uni, is now an inspirational and established teacher who drives a sports car. So he finished his degree at 22, then did a course to become a teacher, finished that at 23 and now earns enough (after 2 years of teaching) to own a sports car. I don’t think so. Also, he has a boyfriend! Well that’s nice for him isn’t it but who is his boyfriend? Oh yeah it’s Deputy Doug, Pacey’s older brother who loves musicals and who Pacey always said was gay. Well look! He is! Basically that's quite offensive because the writers of Dawson’s Creek basically think that if you love musicals you must be secretly gay. Also it’s lazy because they needed a boyfriend for Jack but they couldn’t be bothered to write in a new character. Also, you know, I'm not a square, it's meant to be funny hahahaha, but then it makes a bit of a mockery of that fact that SPOLIER ALERT I'm GIVING AWAY MAJOR PLOT POINTS Jen dies.

Yeah. She's perfectly healthy and getting drunk and then BAM she's dying and then she's dead. The scene where she actually dies is weird and I wasn’t actually sure if she was asleep or dead. And you’re not sure if the funeral is a funeral or just a busy lunchtime at Pacey’s restaurant. Oh yeah cos Pacey OWNS his own restaurant. Now the whole time that Pacey was becoming a chef in season 5, I was quite sceptical and how fast it all happened because I have read Kitchen Confidential (the tell all, behind the scenes honest look at life in restaurant kitchens by Anthony Bourdain that I highly recommend) and I've also read Gordan Ramsey’s autobiography “Humble Pie” (which I suppose is his tell all story of how he is actually quite humble but the front cover picture, and ALL the content, say otherwise). So I KNOW how touch it is to make it in the restaurant biz. I also know that restaurants are money pits. So when Pacey became a talented head chef in 6 months, took a year off to be a scum bag stock broker and then became a head chef again, I thought...HMMMM IMPLAUSABILITY ALERT! But then lo and behold 5 years later he OWNS the place and is doing really well and everyone’s like “aww, look Pacey finally achieved great things like we always knew he could”. Which is nice cos obvs I fancied Pacey and wanted him to get together with Joey again. And apart from the way he became a chef, it is quite plausible that he could own a restaurant at 25. Gordan Rammo did. But he was a chef from 16 onwards with no breaks. Maybe I'm getting bogged down in these details. Or maybe I should become a detective. I'm pretty good at stalking people.

But anyways, at the end of the episode, you can see that Joey and Pacey want to get back together YAYAYAYAYAY, but they  don’t write it in. They just cut to a new scene months later and it shows them living together and sharing half a glass of wine. And that's it. That's the end. It’s SO DISSATISFYING!

I ended up rewinding it and watching it again though and afterwards I felt lost and alone and confused.

I really overloaded and I feel sick to the teeth of telly. I can only watch about 4 hours a day at the moment, instead of my usual 8. Maybe I've changed? I also gave up booze a few weeks ago. Cos I had this terrible hangover followed by another one the next day. I couldn’t handle it. I was a broken woman. This must be what getting old is. So I decided to take a few weeks off the sauce. I'm really enjoying it! I'm spending less money and consuming less calories and sleeping really well. It won’t last obvs. And I can only do things in extreme. Ie booze all the time or no booze. I suppose I'm like Johnny Lee Miller in Trainspotting. He could give up heroin any time he liked. I'm like that. And I can only watch tv programmes if I watch the whole series in one day and then emerge, blinking in the sunlight, unable to accept reality.

But what this means is that now that summer’s here, I won’t be pining for the characters of Capeside and instead can sniffle and snivel and shiver around parks, while huddling for warmth. 

I got 5 on it....being a 90's revival. As it has been for about 3 years thankyou.

A couple of weeks ago there was an article in the Guardian about a possible 90’s revival. WHAT?! You morons, I’ve been channelling the 90’s for several years now! This led me to think about 2 things. Firstly,  about the 90’s, but I do this on a daily basis anyways. And secondly, about how much I love it when trends aren’t set for us, but just occur. No one’s been telling us to be obsessed with the 90’s but we’re doing it anyways and the magazine and newspapers and fashions have to catch up.Bur mostly I just thought some more about the 90s.

I can hold my hand up and say I’m Samantha and I'm a loveaholic. Sorry, I mean I'm Lara and I’m a ninetiesaholic. I bloody love that shit. But why? I looked like a proper dirtbag for whole of the 90’s. I was also a child/teenager. And I wasn’t even a cool one, who wore a parka with a German flag on the arm. Or DM’s with a flowery dress. I wasn’t allowed DM’s! They were like 60 quid and that's even expensive now. Whoever had DM’s had a nice mum and dad. I wasn’t even allowed the knock off versions from Clarks or marksys. But I did wear shapeless flowery dresses so that's good. And I wore them with those weird plimsolls that had a little heel which I had in black AND white. Chic.

But anyways. For the last couple of years I've been obsessed. Before this, it was the 80s. But that wasn’t very original. EVEYONE was obsessed with the 80’s. Going to reflex nightclub and dressing up like someone from Fame at every single fancy dress party. I maybe did that 3 times in total.

But all of a sudden it became the 90’s. But the 90’s wasn’t very long ago was it? so I basically lived my life like normal in the 90s, had a brief hiatus where I liked Flashdance and the like, and then became obsessed with my own past.  

So how did it begin? I think it was when I lived with Hen and Liz. And Liz did the most amazing 90’s dance moves you ever did see. I suppose we had to change our lives accordingly in order to fit in.  She gave me this really cool massive denim jacket. And my mum gave me these cool denim shorts that she got in 1995. They're amazing, they're really high waisted and unflattering and I started wearing them with a white vest. And Hen inherited Liz’s denim jumpsuit. Lots of denim going on. 

This was when we lived in East London and everyone in Shoreditch was already dressing really 90’s. They probably paid quite a lot of their ugly denim shorts though, whereas mine were for free.

Then my sister in law lent me her Party of Five DVD boxset. OMG it was so cool watching that. The clothes! Yes! Unflattering denim everywhere. Everyone’s clothes were too big but no one cared. There’s an amazing episode where Neve Campbell is hanging out at this bar she works at (ILLEGALLY) and she starts singing along to the radio or something and she sings “every day, it’s a getting closer, rolling something, like a rollercoaster” but she sings it REALLY posh and high pitched and then this guys walks in and nods appreciatively like” wow this girl’s got talent”. It’s totes hilair.

Then after a big night out, my friend Laura and me watched the entire series of My So Called Life on DVD. They talk SO SLOWLY. Like this. “so...I was....kinda.....like....wondering..if ...like...maybe you know.....like...if you feel like...like....thinking about.....like...trying to see Jordan Catalano” and I'm not even exaggerating one tiny bit.

My so called life is so amazing. Jordan Catalano is the hottest piece of hotness in the world ever. He's like a beautiful willow tree. and the writers and actors captured so well how pathetic teenage infatuation is. And how easily you interchange your friends. Just like that your best friend is your enemy and someone else has the hot spot.

For a few years I went to an all girl’s convent boarding school. And we were afraid of boys. They were these mysterious sexy sex objects that you couldn’t talk to. But there weren’t any boys to talk to anyways. Starved of boy drama, we had best friend drama instead. If you thought you’d like someone to be your best friend you would send them a note or a message through someone else, asking if they would be your best friend and wait anxiously to see if they’d accept or reject you. And once my best friend cheated on me and got a new one behind my back.. DRAMA.

So anyways, back to my love affair with the 90s.

After my so called life, Dan, my new at the time boyfriend, had amazing 90’s DVD boxsets. He had This Life AND this really weird one about the Lake District. It was set in the Lakes and a lot of the storylines revolved around Lakes. Gosh, what was it called? Who knows.

But again, lots of denim, lost of baggy clothes and frizzy hair. In This Life, Millie’s shit bob hairdo and massive trouser suits and completely unbelievable affair with that rank old man O’Donnell. And Anna’s slicked back hair and mini dresses. There’s one little touch that I always loved about Anna in This Life. And that's that when she's lounging in the house she always wears the EXACT same outfit.

That's something I've noticed about all these 90’s boxsets (currently on Dawson’s Creek btw): they totally understand that normal people have a core set of clothes that they wear a lot. On all these polished programmes today, the characters NEVER wear the same thing twice. They never have a favourite jumper or a go to pair of jeans. But in Dawson’s Creek, Pacy wears the same 3 tshirts over and over again. And Joey wears straightcut jeans with boots EVERY DAY. She also had a favourite Grey jumper. I had a favourite Dire Straits tshirt when I was a teenager and I loved it so much I wanted to sleep in it AND wear it. So I told all my friends I had 3 of them so when they saw me sleeping in it and also wearing it after school (boarding school remember) they wouldn’t think I was skanky.

You all might think I wasn’t really in boarding school but was in prison cos what sort of person only goes to boarding school for a “few years”?

A couple of years ago we had a new years eve party and the theme was 1997. It was amazing. Who knew so much happened that year? But it did. WE had a Dolly the Sheep, Men in Black, Harry Potter, Louise Woodward, Emma Bunton, this fat bloke from Airport. I went as Anna from this life, of course. Slicked back hair, mini dress and the worst makeup ever.

And this blur revival vertainly isn't "recent". A few months later, we all saw Blur TWICE and then I read Alex James’s Autobiography. Even though in the actual 90's, although I did love Blur, I was a massive Oasis fan. My boarding school cubicle (yeah, I lived in a cubicle. I wasn't in prison OK?" was plastered with posters of Liam even though I lost bet with my friend Ashley that meant she got Liam and I had to marry Noel.

But yeah...this “recent” 90’s revival has been going for years for me and my pals.The other day I listened to Warren G on the tube. And now the guardian thinks it can just say oo look everyone should remember the 90s!

Well I've got news for you love. 2 weeks ago I saw Ten Things I hate about You in the cinema for the FOURTH time and tonight I shall be dancing to Say My Name.

Don’t tell me how to revive a decade, love, cos I will outdo you.

Now..like...where are my...like...culottes?