I’ve just about recovered from the Two Flights from Hell experience. I’m not quite recovered from the experience of writing that mammoth post about it, mind you, but I’m soldiering on bravely, and the reason I’m soldiering on bravely is because I know you all have but one burning question in your minds right now, that question being:
“What DID Amber decide to wear to the christening?”
And the answer? Why, I wore the WRONG thing, of course. Of course.
After writing that long, rambling post about how I had absolutely nothing to wear and needed to clean out my wardrobe, I actually did go and clean out my wardrobe. But I still had absolutely nothing to wear, and this is because I work from home. Yes, I know I work from home as a fashion blogger, and you’d think that would make a difference, but you would be wrong, folks. The fact is, I sit around the house all day, venturing out only to either go to the gym, walk the dog or have my regular disastrous haircuts. Not only does it seem a little OTT to do all of this in a dress and heels, I’m also way too lazy to make the effort, which means I have adopted the skinny jeans/vest top/cardigan outfit that is my uniform.
When it comes to things like christenings, then? Nothing to wear.
In an effort to try and address this issue, I ordered loads of clothes from the Internet. Then I sent them all back again because either they just didn’t fit or looked really odd on me. See “The One Where I Am Deformed” for background on my really weird shape and how nothing ever fits me right. If you have nothing better to do with your life, obviously.
By the time last weekend rolled around, then, I STILL had absolutely nothing to wear. So for the first leg of our journey, which involved travelling from Edinburgh to Birmingham, to briefly visit Terry’s brother John, I went with my trusty outfit of … er, skinny jeans and a top. Because I am THAT adventurous. Oh, and I also took a cardigan. And a coat. And SPF 50, because the thing about travelling in the UK is that you never know WHAT you might need.
In this case, it was the SPF 50. The sun was absolutely blazing down on Birmingham, and by the time we’d finished walking around the agricultural fair John and Jolene took us to near their house (this was really nice, and I got to touch an owl. Note to self: ask Terry again if we can get an owl.) I had basically melted, and was really regretting the skinny jeans, let me tell you.
Anyway, we had lunch at a cute little country restaurant (we weren’t actually in Birmingham city centre, by the way, but in the countryside surrounding it) and then went to John and Jolene’s house, which was lovely. Then it was time to drive south, to Hertfordshire, where we checked into our hotel and started getting ready to meet my friends Stephanie and Nick (parents of the baby being christened) and most of Nick’s family for dinner. Here’s what I WAS planning to wear to the restaurant:
The problem with this, though? Couldn’t iron it. This was fairly annoying to me because I’m a little bit obsessed with ironing. I mean, I say, “a little bit” – I’m the woman who took her iron with her to Hertfordshire. Yes. And before you say anything, yes, I know hotels normally have irons in them. But I’d stayed in this hotel before, and it had been one of those situations where you have to ask for the iron at reception and they bring it to your room. I knew we were going to have less than an hour to check in and then get ourselves to the restaurant, and what if someone else in the hotel was using the iron at the time, and I was forced to wear really badly creased clothes? WHAT IF, people?
Well, that thought just could not be borne. I iron EVERYTHING. Sometimes I iron things when they come out of the machine, and then iron them again before I wear them. We recently ran a poll on The Fashion Police asking people whether or not they iron, and I was absolutely amazed by the number of people who said they don’t even own irons, let alone use them. How do they do it? How are they not walking around looking constantly crumpled? Because I certainly am, and I DO iron. It boggles my mind.
Anyway, that black dress crumples up like a dishcloth if you so much as look at it, let alone cram it in a suitcase for several hours, so I packed the iron. And of course, there was one in the room. D’oh! But I did not wear the black the dress. No, because it’s a really complicated dress, with lots of different sections that need to be very carefully ironed, and it was screwed up like a dishcloth and I just didn’t have time. So instead, I wore another black dress. Which seriously, was a really, really bad idea given how freaking hot it was…
Anyway, we met up with Stephanie and headed to the restaurant where we proceeded to slowly melt while catching up and drinking way too much wine. Really great to see her again, though: Steph and I have been friends since the first day of university, when we discovered we were the only two girls in the dinner queue wearing high heels. We shared a flat together in Edinburgh for two years (two different flats, actually, both fairly scummy), and now she has a baby, OMG! I haven’t seen her since my wedding, and the weekend made me wish I lived closer to my friends, and not just because maybe they’d be able to stop me wearing skinny jeans or black dresses all the time.
After dinner Terry and I went back to our hotel and had another glass of wine each. Because if you haven’t drank much in the way of water all day, are starting to dehydrate from the heat, and have remembered to bring the iron but forgotten to bring the painkillers, you would totally have another glass of wine at that point. Then we went to bed, and in the morning I got up and got dressed for the christening in….
Yet another black dress! Well, it couldn’t really have been anything else, could it now?
Of course, everyone else was dressed as if for a wedding. And it was boiling. But we still had a fantastic time:: the baby, Dylan, is just super-cute, and my other friend, Morag (also from University) was there, and announced that she’s expecting a baby of her own in January, so it was a day of much celebrating. The weather was glorious, the barbecue was yummy, and I ate about four slices of cake.
But I am now more determined than ever to try and invest in some clothes that aren’t:
a) skinny jeans
or
b) black dresses
I’m recording this fact here to try and motivate myself to actually do this.
And now I’m going to go and do some ironing.
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So, the airplane that transported us from Edinburgh to Birmingham on Saturday morning? Was a toy plane. A tiny little 20-row thing, with little fragile wings and the look of a model aircraft about it. DAMN.
I first noticed the plane as we walked towards our gate. Like every other airport I’ve ever been to, the gates at Edinburgh have huge windows, through which you can see your aircraft sitting taunting you waiting for you to board it. Only, someone had clearly made a mistake with ours, because sitting next to our gate was a Tonka toy.
“God, I’d hate to be the person that has to travel in that thing,” I thought, smugly. “Because that just doesn’t look safe to me at all.”
Yeah, it was our plane. OF COURSE it was our plane. And there was no way in hell I was getting on it, so a small scene broke out as I threw a hissy fit and Terry tried frantically to reassure me that no, that was NOT one of those planes that are always crashing all the time, and yes it was definitely a real aircraft. We finally arrived at a compromise whereby I agreed to get on the tonka toy on the condition that after this weekend, we never try to fly anywhere within the UK ever again. I still don’t know quite how Terry managed to persuade me, and I kinda wish I’d held out for the Louboutins now, because I started to regret my decision as soon as we went to board and I realised the plane was so small there wasn’t even a tunnel, or those roll-up steps to take you onto it. Instead, they just opened the door (of which there was only one) and we were dragged up climbed up the little steps that were inside it.
The steps took us right next to the cockpit (that word really doesn’t look right to me), and the door happened to be open. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I glanced in, and the pilot (there only seemed to be one pilot, by the way. I’m pretty sure they’re not allowed to fly commercial flights without a co-pilot, so maybe there was one of those inflatable ones from Airplane, and I just didn’t see it. That said, I was also pretty sure they weren’t allowed to fly planes they bought at Toys-R-Us, either, which just shows what Iknow…) was sitting in the smallest space imaginable, with his knees up somewhere around his ears. I think I saw an XBox control pad in front of him, that he was presumably going to use to fly the thing, but I may have just imagined that.
So, that didn’t reassure me much. I turned away from the cockpit (nope, still doesn’t look right), and glanced right, into the cabin. I don’t know why, but as we boarded the plane, I had somehow managed to convince myself that it was bigger than it looked. You know, like the Tardis. But it wasn’t. No, inside were about twenty rows of seats: one one side of the plane there were groups of two seats together, and on the other there was only enough room for one seat. ONE. SEAT.
I wish there was a way I could tell the rest of this story in which I DON’T come out of it all looking like a crazy asshole, but I’m afraid to say I totally freaked out at this point. As I explained to Terry, it has always been one of my goals in life to never have to fly in a small plane. Now, during the rest of this flight, Terry gave me lots of reasons why this small plane was safe to fly in, and even tried to reassure me that, why, it really wasn’t all that small at all. The thing was, though, it just did not feel safe to me. In fact, it felt a bit like a bus with wings, only slightly less secure than that. It felt like the smallest gust of wind would blow us away, and God knows, THAT wouldn’t have been good . Also: little planes always seem to crash. You hear about it on the news and you think, “Oh, it was one of those small planes. I’ll never travel in one of those, so I don’t need to worry about that.” But folks? You DO need to worry about it. Oh yes you do.
Anyway, somehow we got into our seats and the steward came over to ask what he could do to help the crazy lady. It is to Terry’s great credit that he didn’t just answer, “throw her out of the window”, and it’s to my great credit (I think) that I didn’t just get up and make a run for it, because that’s what I’ve always imagined myself doing every time I’ve freaked myself out by imagining myself in that exact scenario. Which I do quite a lot, actually. ( WHY?) The steward offered to let me sit in the back of the plane, next to him, but this would have entailed separating me from Terry, and also, I don’t think they could have wrenched my hands off the armrests at that point, so I stayed where I was, and after someone on the ground had finished winding the plane up (presumably), we took off, sounding a bit like a car struggling to get up a hill.
I should probably admit at this point that the actual flight wasn’t too bad. For one thing, it was only 45 minutes long, and for another, I am a freaking idiot who really shouldn’t be allowed out in public. Terry did a stellar job of keeping me calm (seriously, he was brilliant – mad props to Terry, folks. Sorry you married a madwoman!) and we entertained ourselves by looking at the in-flight safety card, which had little diagrams showing the plane crashing onto the ground and lots of little stick people running away from it with their hands in the air. There was also one showing the plane crashing into water, but there weren’t any little stick people in that picture, and that’s because all the stick people DIED in that diagram.
I promise I’m not making this up.
Landing was fun – and by that I mean, landing was no fun at all, GOD. Even Terry admitted it was bumpier than in a real plane, with the aircraft accelerating noisily every time it dropped down a bit (I say “noisily” – it sounded a lot like my hairdryer, actually) and also, wobbling from side to side. Those little stick people popped into my head, and remained there,waving their stick arms in terror. And then we were down. And alive. Needless to say, I was one of the first off the plane. (I actually kind of wish I’d thought to take it with me, for the baby whose christening we were flying to, but you always think of these things too late, don’t you?) I went straight to the airport rest room to try and calm myself down, and also wash the cold sweat off my hands, but unfortunately, I went into the mens by mistake, which succeeded only in frightening a bunch of my fellow passengers. Seriously, you never want to fly with me, you really don’t. Sorry, Terry.
You would think that would be the worst thing that could’ve happened to us when flying this weekend, wouldn’t you? And actually, you’d be right: it was the worst thing that happened. But another trial was to come, as we flew back from Luton last night. No, this entry is STILL not ever yet! In fact, in the words of the Carpenters, we’ve only just begun!
So, we flew back with Easyjet, who, despite having been the objects of a fair amount of criticism from me over the years (I’m not naming the other airline here because, aside from having purchased their aircraft in Toys-R-Us, they actually did nothing wrong) do at least have real aircraft. I know, because I made Terry phone them to check. Sorry, again, Terry! So as we boarded the plane, in the usual cattle truck fashion, with Terry having to sprint ahead to make sure we could get two seats together (my hero!) otherwise I would’ve freaked the hell out again, I was actually feeling fairly calm. See, this is my favourite size of plane: it’s not so big that the idea of it getting off the ground at all is implausible (also, the roar of the engines on jumbos terrifies me) and it’s not so small it looks like a clockwork toy. So I handled the takeoff, and the entire flight, almost like a normal person.
I was sitting there feeling rather smug, and preparing for landing, however, when the pilot spoke to us.
“We should be landing at Edinburgh,” he said, “but there’s mist there, so we’re currently in a holding pattern over Peebles. Which is really quite pretty, you should take a look out of the window!”
OK. This was fine. Slightly puzzling, because yes, of course there was mist at Edinburgh. I mean, it’s Edinburgh. It would be more surprising if he’d said the weather there was fine. But whatever. I continued to leaf through my magazine, and then the pilot spoke to us again.
“Yes,” he said, “we’re still in that holding pattern, and also, our equipment on the ground at Edinburgh is broken, so we’re going to either land there in the fog with the broken equipment, or we’re going to divert to Glasgow. Also: the view to left really is smashing. Bye!”
Okaaay. My vote was for not landing in fog with broken equipment. Because I’d already used up my entire stock of hysteria on the other flight, and I was all out of dramatics. So when he came back on the intercom, reminded us that the view was pretty and said we’d be diverting to Glasgow, I was sort of OK with that. They would bus us back to Edinburgh, it would take an hour, we’d still be home soon, and also, we’d not be landing in fog with broken equipment. So we resigned ourselves to a quick trip to Glasgow.
Sure enough, just a few minutes later, we were over Glasgow. We admired Glasgow from the air. For quite some time, actually. Then we turned round and started flying down the west coast, heading south.
“We’re over the west coast,” said the pilot. “It’s really quite pretty, isn’t it? Also, Glasgow won’t let us land, so we’re going to Prestwick now, kthnxbai.”
Yes, Prestwick. It’s in Ayrshire. Which is approximately nowhere near where we were meant to be. (It’s also the only place in the UK to have been visited by Elvis, but that’s beside the point.) The airport is called “Glasgow Prestwick”, which has always puzzled me, because it’s only close to Glasgow in the way that, say, Edinburgh is close to Glasgow. And they don’t call it “Glasgow Edinburgh Airport”, do they? But I digress. And actually, so did the plane, which landed at Prestwick and then sat on the runway for 40 minutes, with us all trapped inside, its helpless prisoners, while the staff at Pretwick entertained the novel idea that hey, there was a big white thing parked outside and they’d need stairs to get people off it.
In Prestwick Airport’s defense, I think it was actually supposed to be closed at the time, which would explain why they didn’t surrender our bags for another hour, by which time a further SIX flights had landed there, all diverted from Edinburgh. Really, it was no fun at all. On the plane, they’d told us that coaches had been ordered. From EDINBURGH. Because, you know, that makes sense? If you needed coaches in Ayr, you’d send for them from Edinburgh, not from the nearest large city, which would be Glasgow, wouldn’t you? You’d also only order two coaches, for 300 people. And you’d not really bother to tell the stranded passengers much about any of this, so by the time those coaches turned up, at 12.45am, all of those 300 people would have to act like savages, all streaming out of the airport en masse, and biting and scratching their way to the front of the queue. Because that would be fun, no?
Also fun: the sight of Terry picking up our cow-print suitcase, slinging it onto his shoulder and then sprinting for the bus, like Tarzan. Well, as like Tarzan as a man with a cow-print suitcase can be, obviously. Yes, Terry was damn sure we were getting on that bus, and we did, although as I climbed the steps, I could feel the crowd all trying to pull me back down again, and it was a bit like being in 28 Days Later, with all the mad, rabid, infected people battering off the sides of the bus, as we drove away.
Not that we drove very far, though.
(No, the entry is STILL not over! Sorry.)
We drove as far as the turnstiles that let you our of the airport. There is a barrier. You need a ticket to get out of the barrier. There were two cars and a bus in front of us. The driver of the first car did not have a ticket. Rather than going to the ticket machine a few metres from the barrier, he elected to go back to the terminal building, leaving his car abandoned at the barrier, blocking the way. We all waited patiently while he did this.
Once he’d driven away, we realised the second car was also driver-less. Where was the driver? Why, in the terminal, of course, getting a ticket for the machine! So we waited again. (Actually, I have to say, everyone was really patient throughout all of this, as by now we were all survivors, pulling together by God!)
Then it was the turn of the bus to go through the barrier. Instead, it chose to wrap itself around a nearby pillar. “I knew he was going to do that,” remarked our driver, who went on to assure us all that although the bus in front was good at going up hills, our bus could go really fast on the flat, so we would still beat it. Which was good, because obviously by now we all had but one objective in our minds: to beat the other bus. And we did, although by the time we ran into the sheer wall of fog that had, indeed, settled upon Edinburgh that night, the other bus had pulled ahead again. If you have never raced a bus through Glasgow at 1am, my advice to you is this: don’t.
And so we made it to Edinburgh. The bus driver had told us the journey would take “an hour”, which had terrified me as this would only have been possible had the bus sprouted wings, and as we’d already travelled on a bus with wings that weekend, there was no way I was going through THAT again. Instead, it took closer to two, and then we had to free the car from the short stay car park, and drive home in thick fog, arriving at 3am and realising that we could actually have flown to Florida in the time it had taken us to get home. Again, you only think of these things when it’s too late…
So, that was our weekend, and I have told you absolutely nothing about our time in the Midlands, my reunion with my two best friends, the cuteness of the baby, the christening, the barbecue, the Chinese restaurant where I drank too much wine, the news that one of said friends (the one who isn’t the mother of the baby who was christened) is pregnant, or the fact that I really DID take the iron with me to Hertfordshire.
Well, folks, I may not have much of my sanity left this week, but by God, do I have a clean house – and not just because of my borderline OCD interest in cleaning this time.
No, it’s because the Internet keeps going down. And when there’s no Internet, ain’t nothing to do but pace anxiously around the house, randomly cleaning things as a kind of frenzied displacement activity, right? Right?
It happened for the first time yesterday afternoon. There I was slogging womanfully through the massive amount of posts about shoes I had to write by the end of the week, and suddenly my computer went on a Go Slow. Each page would take five minutes to load, sometimes longer. Other times, it would time out altogether, leaving me frantically hitting the “refresh” button, because as we all know, THAT HELPS.
I put up with this for as long as I could stand it, which was about ten minutes, then I called Tech Support, who I know simply as “Terry”.
Terry did manage to get things back to normal again, but it took a while, and by the time I was able to get back to work, the house was sparkling, I kid you not. The work situation, meanwhile, wasn’t looking quite so good.
See, we’re going away this weekend. I may have mentioned it once or twice. Even although we’ll only be gone for one night, leaving early Saturday and getting back late Sunday, this trip has taken a helluva lot of arrangin’. I would say this is because we own a business, and it’s hard to go away for a break when you own a business, but actually, I think it’s just me. I am high maintenance. Packing for one-night away will take me hours. Hours. Let’s just say I don’t travel light – in fact, even although it’s one night away and we’re only travelling to the south of England, we’re having to take a suitcase rather than a carry-on, just so I can bring all of my makeup and toiletries. Oh, and the iron.
Anyway, so I’m high-maintenance, I know that. And because I know that, I had set aside all of Friday afternoon for packing. This meant that the work I would have normally done on Friday afternoon and evening had to be done earlier this week. I decided to do it on Wednesday, and when the Internet suddenly decided not to play along, I silently congratulated myself for this feat of forward planning, for I still had all of Thursday to do this massive chunk o’ work! Why, I was one clever cookie, no?
Well, no. Not really. Because today we came back to the office after Neighbours lunch, and the Internet wasn’t working AT ALL. D’oh!
Prompted by my shrieks of dismay, Terry got right on the phone to Virgin Media, who are our Internet providers, hereafter referred to as the Imps of Satan. After a few short minutes, they confirmed what we already knew: there was a problem with the network in our area. Would they be doing anything about it, though? Oh hell to the no. I mean, you must be joking, it’s not like we pay for this you know… oh no, wait. We do.
The Imps of Satan, you see, have a policy. The policy is that when a customer makes them aware of a problem with the Internet connection in a particular area, Virgin Media do absolutely nothing about this. At all. Instead, they wait until other people from that area call to complain. Only when a certain Magic Number of complaints is reached will they send someone to fix the problem. Until then? Nothing.
Now, this is clearly the dumbest policy in the world, ever. I mean, if you’re eating in a restaurant and you complain to the server that hey, there was a severed finger in your soup, they don’t just shrug and say, “So? We’ll wait until we get complaints about the other four before we do anything about that,” do they? No. (Well, it depends where you’re eating I guess.) No, if a customer has a problem, you try your best to fix that problem, you don’t just yawn and say, “Well, yaknow, if there were lots of people with the problem, we’d care, but seeing as it’s just you…” Or, to put it another way, “Screw you, suckers! We’re not going to fix your stupid Internet until an angry mob beats a path to our door and demands we FIX THE INTERNET NOW.”
Trust me, I was totally willing to arrange this. I’m sure Rubin and I could totally act like an “angry mob”. No, really.
Anyway, that wasn’t the worst thing The Imps of Satan did to us today. No, the worst thing they did was slam down the phone when Terry called them back an hour later to ask what was going on. (And trust me, Terry was perfectly polite to the operator. She just slammed the phone down on him because she was a bitch.) Oh, and they also blatantly lied to him at one point too, just to get him off the phone. This was confirmed by the supervisor he eventually got to speak to after about two hours of no Internet, and another mad bout of house cleaning from me.
After that we gave up and resorted to dial-up. I know! Rocking it 1999 style! It was more or less the same as the day before when the computer had been on the Go Slow, only worse, because by then I wanted to break something – preferably something at Virgin Media.
So, it’s now 9pm, and I’ve only just finished making up the time I’ve lost. I haven’t even had time to think about packing the iron and all that stuff, although I have found time to worry quite a bit about dying a fiery death as my plane plummets to the ground on Saturday, because that whole “Not worrying about the flying” thing I was talking about earlier this week?” Oh how young and naive I was back then! Thanks for all of the “plane crashing into the ocean” dreams you’ve served up in the intervening nights, subconscious! Is the hypochondria not enough of a stick for you to beat me with? Sheesh.
Anyway. The broadband connection is working again, although for how long, who knows. The work is finally either done or abandoned, because GOD, there’s only so much you can do with slow-speed dial-up, you know?
I have wine in the fridge. And a really, really clean house in which to drink it. And Virgin Media? I am SO coming to poke you in the eye, don’t you forget it…
UPDATE: For the benefit of anyone reading this in the future, as the result of a Google search, I am no longer intent on poking Virgin Media in the eye, and you can read the update to this story here.
Has it really been five days since I last updated? Oops. There is no particular reason for this, I’m afraid. I mean, I’d like to say I was suddenly overwhelmed by inspiration and have spent the last five days frantically hammering out The Novel, or that I was whisked off to an exotic sun-drenched island or something, but no. I’m just lazy. So lazy, in fact, that I’m going to write you a list to bring you up to date with the not-very-interesting things I’ve been getting up to recently. Sorry.
1. My hair is still a freaking disaster. Seriously, it turned out to be my most hated haircut ever. I’ve been wearing it up every day since I had it cut, and on Saturday I had to go and buy a whole bunch of new hair clips and alice bands and stuff (because yes, it’s not like I didn’t have enough of those already) to try and fight it back. Gah.
2. I bought these items on the same shopping trip that was made necessary by the fact that I dyed all but one of my white knickers grey in the wash. Yes, I am writing about my underwear on the Internet now. Sorry, mum. People who know me in real life: please pretend you didn’t read this entry next time you see me.
3. Seriously, though, about the knickers… This happens to me roughly once every six weeks, I would say. Do you have any idea how hard it is to buy plain white knickers? They all seem to come with some kind of black trim, which is where the dye comes from. The label says, "wash with similar colours". WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Are you supposed to wash them with dark colours or with white colours? Because either way, the knickers themselves would still turn grey. Am I supposed to hand wash them all? Who has time for that? Not me.
4. It’s OK, that’s me finished talking about my knickers now. It’s safe to read on.
5. On Saturday, Terry borrowed Guitar Hero from one of his friends and we took it with us when we went to visit my parents that night. I liked it so much I made Terry stop at the all-night Tesco on the way home and buy us our own copy. Since then, it’s more or less all I’ve thought about. Nirvana! Pearl Jam! Smashing Pumpkins! Oh, you rock bands of the 90s, how I love you! At night, when I try to sleep, I see those Guitar Hero dots floating in front of my eyes and hear "Even Flow" echoing around my head. In fact, I’m hearing it now…
6. On Thursday, when I was out walking Rubin, we met a man with three dogs, one of which was called "Lazy" and one of which was called "Fatty". I don’t know what the third was called. Not sure I want to know.
7. This weekend, we’re heading south, for the christening of my best friend’s baby. We’ll be flying into Birmingham, spending a few hours there with Terry’s brother, John (he of kidney-donating fame), and then driving down to Hertfordshire where we’ll stay the night in a hotel before flying back from Luton on Sunday evening, after the christening. Am looking forward to this as I haven’t seen Steph since my wedding, and I haven’t met her little boy at all. Because that’s the kind of bad friend I am. Weirdly, I haven’t started worrying about the flights yet, other than a couple of times when I’ve woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. This is definite progress for me!
8. I had wanted to have ten points in this list, just to make it an even number, but I can’t think of any… oh no, wait!
9. Last night Terry and I watched The Ruins It was one of those movies which I had to watch mostly through my fingers. Really gory. But at least it got the Guitar Hero dots out of my head for a little while that night, as I lay awake worrying about flesh-eating plants instead.
Yeah, I know, I’m totally running out of clever titles for posts in which I go to the hairdresser and return with a headfull of crazy layers that don’t look any different AT ALL to anyone else but me. Sorry.
And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “The hell? Didn’t we just do thisnot so long ago? Surely it can’t be time for another disastrous haircut entry already? And also: what the hell is wrong with this woman? WILL SHE NEVER LEARN? What was she doing back at the hairdresser when she knows it always ends badly?”
Well, you see, it needed a trim. And I had this idea that if I keep getting the back trimmed, but not the sides (mullet), then the sides will surely catch up with the back quicker than they would if I just let sides AND back grow unrestrained. See, that made sense when I said it in my own fool head, but … gah. You know the luck I have with the hairdresser. I should really just stay at home, and trust me, this time I really think I will. I think I’m just going to let it grow until people start shouting “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” at me. I figure then, and only then will I be rid of these freaking choppy layers that, oh my God, make me want to PULL MY HAIR RIGHT OUT OF MY HEAD. Because GOD, this is getting old.
Anyway, so I went to the salon, and I asked, as usual, for a trim. To be fair, that’s exactly what I would’ve got: I mean, the stylist had sympathised with me about the mullet job, had gently warned me that there was no quick fix for this, and that it was just going to have to take its own sweet time to grow out. He agreed with me that I was doing the best thing by keeping it trimmed, otherwise it would start looking even worse, and he took only the tiniest amount possible off the mullet part, so it wouldn’t look any shorter.
So, it was all going pretty good, huh? I was sitting there silently congratulating myself on at last getting a good haircut, and then, all of a sudden, my mouth snapped open and I heard myself say, “Also, you could just cut in a fringe at the front.” Seriously, it was like a scene out of The Exorcist or something – like some other, malevolent being had taken over my body and started asking for FRINGES. Because hell, it’s not like THAT’S ever worked out before, is it?
I thought I’d got away with it at first. When I got home and looked in the mirror, I thought it was fine. I mean, it wasn’t GREAT: my hair will never be “great” until grow out these damn layers, but it certainly didn’t look any worse than it had before, and I’m at the point now where “not looking any worse” counts as a good haircut for me.
Then I went downstairs to make coffee and let the dog out, and caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the glass on the back door.
And I hate it.
AGAIN.
It’s a long fringe – in fact, it’s really not so different from how it was before. But it IS different. It is shorter. It’s too long to sit on my forehead, like a regular fringe, but too short to stick behind my ears, like I always wear my hair. And the introduction of yet another different length of hair on my head… well, let’s just say it wasn’t such a great idea, because it has only served to emphasise all the other layers, and this time I have only myself to blame, because the stylist did exactly what Evil Amber told him to do.
Thank God all those Blair-Waldorf-style headbands are in fashion right now, is all I can say. And at least I’ll save money on haircuts for the rest of this year, because as God is my witness, I will not be going back until these stupid layers grow out. Not even for a trim, because clearly it’s too dangerous. If I even mention the idea of getting another haircut here, or on Twitter, please feel free to reach through your computer screen and deliver a good, hard slap, because seriously.
Just to soothe my frazzled nerves, here is a picture of the new shoes I got this week, as a PR freebie. They are shiny. I will wear them when I’m off to see the wizard. To ask him to give me some hair, natch.
Earlier this week, I woke up this morning to find that someone had tried to post well over 100 comments on The Fashion Police, all complaining about the choice of category I’d filed certain posts in. There were dozens and dozens of comments, all saying things like “This should be in the ‘catwalk fashion’ category!” and “This should be in ‘fashion news’”, interspersed with comments like “I have no idea why you’ve filed this here!” and “This entire category has too many posts in it!” Now, in some cases, the commenter had a point. The Fashion Police currently has well over 2000 posts in its archive, and yes, some of those have been miscategorized. Most of them hadn’t been, though: they were in the categories I wanted them to be in, it was just that this girl thought she knew better and wanted to correct me.
My first instinct was to laugh. It seemed ridiculous to me that someone would spend so much time (and it really must have taken her a LOT of time to post that many comments) getting wound up over the way some random stranger chose to organise her blog.
My second instinct was to be flattered. This girl obviously really cares about my blog to want to spend hours of her time commenting on it. Which, despite the rather obnoxious way she went about it, is flattering really.
My third instinct was just to shake my head and wonder where on earth these people find the energy and the motivation. I just can’t imagine caring so deeply about someone else’s website that I’d waste hours of my time picking holes in it. And even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have the time to do that. Just to make this particular case even stranger, the commenter in question was someone who had already been banned from the site for leaving abusive comments.
Every single one of her comments had gone straight to the spam folder – not one of them had actually appeared on the site, and I only noticed them because the spam folder seemed unusually full when I logged in. Either she didn’t notice that her comments weren’t appearing, or she just didn’t care, and went on and on finding fault with my site and commenting on it regardless. Which kind of blows me away, really. Sadly, this wasn’t an isolated incident. A couple of days earlier, I’d had to delete around 200 comments from someone who’d gone through the blog archive, leaving abusive comments on as many posts as she could manage. Again, this must have taken a good couple of hours to do: can you even imagine wanting to spend hours of your life trying to make a complete stranger feel bad? No, me neither. Those comments didn’t get stopped by the spam filter, but although it must have taken her a long time to write them all, it still only took me a matter of seconds to mass delete them. Another futile exercise on the part of the troll. I mention all of this, not because it surprises me: sadly, I’ve been blogging long enough (and living long enough, come to think of it) to know that there are an awful lot of people out there who just delight in being nasty. I don’t even try to find explanations for it any more beyond thinking the people who spend hours trying to make strangers feel bad must have small, small lives) but because itis becoming an increasing problem that I need to find a way to deal with, so any suggestions you may have on how to do that would be very welcome. I’d rather spend my time writing than moderating comments, but at the moment it’s just not working out like that at all. And it looks like I need to spend a bit of time looking at my category archives, too…
Several times over the past few weeks I’ve been contacted by US-based PRs who want to know if I’d be interested in reviewing one of their products for our beauty blog, Hey-Dollface. The PR will generally begin their pitch by telling me what a huge fan they are of the site (“I read it every day!”) and how their knowledge of the site has led them to the conclusion that their product will be of interest to my readers.
Now, this is nothing unusual. Product reviews are Dollface’s stock-in-trade: they bring more visitors to the site than any other content we publish, and in most cases the products offered for review are relevant to our readers, so of course my answer to this question is normally going to be “Yes, sure, here’s the address!”
But there’s the rub. Time and time again recently my positive response to these PR approaches has been met with a dismayed, “Oh. You’re in the UK. I didn’t know that. We can’t send the product to the UK. Sorry.”
Then I never hear from them again. So much for all the “love your blog, read it every day, huge fan” stuff.
Now, quite apart from anything else, I find this kind of thing very unprofessional. As I said in this entry, it’s not difficult to find out where I’m located. Our mailing address is listed on the site, on the “About/Contact” page, which is prominently linked from the top of the home page (Note: the site is actually having some technical work done to it at the moment, so that link isn’t live today, just in case you feel like checking it – the page is also accessible from the sidebar, though.).
If I was a PR thinking about pitching a product review to a journalist or blogger, I would have thought their “about” page would be pretty essential reading, no? And I know these PRs must have looked at the “contact” page, because they got my email address from it – scrolling past the mailing address to find it. Also: if these PRs were, indeed, the huge fans and daily readers they claim to be, surely they’d have noticed the British spelling (or maybe they just think I don’t know how to spell? I get a fair few emails form Americans pulling me up for my “incorrect spelling” of words like “centre” and neighbour”, and very few have the grace to apologise when I point out that, no, that’s how we write over here…) and regular references to living in the UK? Apparently not.
So, on one level I think it’s unprofessional to contact a writer asking them to review a product and then abruptly withdraw the offer as soon as you realise where they’re based. The bottom line? You should have done your homework. Even if you didn’t feel you could trust the mailing address listed on my site, a quick email asking where I was based would have been better than laying on the flattery thick and then suddenly realising that, actually, you don’t want anything to do with me at all. You just wasted everyone’s time by doing that, and made yourself look unprofessional.
But actually, the unprofessionalism of offering products for review and then withdrawing the offer (“Whoops, sorry, turns out you’re not important enough after all!”) isn’t what I meant to write about here. So yes, that was a massive digression, wasn’t it? No, what I actually wanted to do was ask this question of any US-based PRs out there:
Why are you so dismissive of journalists and bloggers who are based in the UK?
Now, you may think the answer to this question is obvious, and is something along the lines of, “Duh! Because we’re an American site, selling to Americans. What good would a mention on your UK-based website do us, especially if we don’t even ship to your country?”
If this was the print media we were talking about, this would be fair enough. There would be little point in the PR for an American company that doesn’t offer international shipping spending time trying to get their product mentioned in a publication that’s only available in the UK.
But this is the Internet. It’s not called the world wide web for nothing. And it seems pretty short-sighted to me to assume that if a website owner is based in the UK, all his or her readers must be based there too.
As it happens, although I’m in the UK, the vast majority of Hey, Dollface’s readers come from the US. Actually, the UK is only the 4th biggest source of traffic. This is interesting to me as a blogger, of course, but it’s not exactly surprising. After all, I don’t restrict myself to viewing only those websites which are written by people living in the same country as me. I don’t know anyone who does. Many major companies make just that assumption, though, and I’m not just talking about sending out product samples and press releases, either…
Take Sephora, for instance. They are one of the biggest cosmetics retailers in the world. They don’t ship to the UK, unfortunately, but I visit their stores every time I’m in the US, spend hundreds of dollars with them, and link to them every week from my beauty blog.
When I tried to join their affiliate scheme, however, I discovered that not only could I not join it, I couldn’t even apply for it: my application is automatically rejected because I have a UK address, and when I tried emailing the company directly to explain that although I may be in the UK, the majority of my readers are not, I got a standard reply stating that I would have to “amend” my location before I could apply to the affiliate scheme.
Clearly I’m not able to switch continents just to join an affiliate scheme, so I miss out on this opportunity, not just with Sephora, but with all of the retailers like them who have similar “no UK based affiliate” rules. Similarly, I miss out on information from US-based PRs, about products and issues which may well have been of interest to my readers – and they miss out on the publicity I could have given them, which would have gone right to their target audience.
So, what gives here? Is there a reason I’m not aware of why US companies and PRs don’t want to deal with UK-based bloggers, or is it just short sightedness?
A couple of days ago, I received the following email:
“I wish to apply as a writer for your company. i am a nigerian and a graduate of the <college name removed. It was typed all in lower case, though.>.By the grace of God almighty i am knowledgeable in my field. this includes such courses as < insert a long list of subjects bearing no relation to anything our blogs cover> please i would want to be involved in articles, term papers and projects partaining to the above areas either to develop and sell or to be paid for writing. thank you.”
Now, what did capital letters do to this guy, do you think, to make him ignore them so thoroughly? And what on earth made him think that we’d be looking for freelancers who write almost entirely in lower case?
(I should probably add here that every time I post something like this, I get comments from people who have trawled through my own sites in order to find typos and point them out to me. Yes, I know I make errors too. Show me the writer who has never, ever made a mistake and… well, I probably won’t believe you. So, when I post these items, I’m not trying to say that I am perfect, or that no one is ever allowed to make a mistake. The fact is, these things happen. Even the very best writers out there are guilty of making the odd typo. I’m just pointing out that when you’re applying for a job as a writer, it’sparticularly important to make sure that you are, at the very least, writing in standard English.)
Yesterday, to my very great surprise, there was clearly some kind of disturbance in the Force, and the weather changed from “Unbelieveably, heart-rendingly awful” to an approximation of a pleasant spring day. That’s about as good as it gets in Scotland, so naturally we all (“we all” being my parents, Terry, the dog and I) jumped into the car and headed to the beach.
The beach we went to was at North Berwick, which,as some of you know, has the distinction of being my Favourite Place in the Whole of Scotland. It’s a pretty little seaside town, with lots of little restaurants and bars, and oh, a great big old volcanic plug, called Berwick Law. Here is a picture of Berwick Law (not taken by me, I hasted to add):
Here is a picture of me, Terry and Rubin on the very top of Berwick Law, which is steeper than it looks, let me tell you:
And here is a short video of me falling flat on my ass on the way back down:
Notice the way my family all come rushing to my aid… they clearly weren’t too concerned, because obviously I do this kind of thing A LOT. The long pause after I land was caused partly by my reluctance to accept my own clumsiness, and partly by my quiet conviction that I had broken my right wrist. Which I hadn’t, luckily.
Just a few minutes after this I almost fell again, the result being that my parents had to take an arm each, and half-carry me down the hill, like Amy Winehouse being escorted out of a nightclub. As my dad said, people were probably looking at us thinking, “Tut, tut, drunk in the middle of the day!” This time, though, my complete inability to walk unaided was caused by my shoes, which my dad described as “ridiculous” and I described as “the only flat shoes I own, what do you expect me to wear?” So, yes, fun for all the family! And ridiculous shoes = the only kind you’ll ever need…
Actually, falling-on-ass aside, we had an excellent day, and I have spent most of my time since we got back looking at property prices in North Berwick on the internet, because it’s one of the few places in Scotland I can actually imagine myself being happy to live in. It’s only 30 minutes from Edinburgh by train, and I’ve always wanted to live by the sea, but unfortunately so do a lot of other people, as property is really expensive there, and as things stand, Terry and I could possibly stretch to a one bedroom flat, but only if we give up food and send Rubin out to work. Still, it’s a more realistic dream than my “cross my fingers and hope the American government will let me live in Florida” one, so I’m going to continue to persue it.
You know what would make my life a whole lot easier than it currently is? Being able to dress myself without having to ask my mum, Erin, Terry, and the entire internet what I should be wearing. I mean, you’d think I’d have learned how to do that by now, wouldn’t you? I am, after all, “a big girl”. I have been wearing clothes all my life. Oh yeah, and I write about fashion for a living. My entire life revolves around looking at clothes. Yet still I struggle. WHY?
My latest sartorial dilemma involves the christening Terry and I are going to at the end of the month. What do you wear to a christening? Now, I’ve only been to one christening in my entire life, so, based on what I can remember of it, my answer would have to be, “A tartan dress with a square collar, white knee socks and buckle shoes. Shiny ones.” But I was about nine at the time, so I somehow don’t think that same outfit is going to work for me this time, hmmm?
And so I turned to the Internet.
“Wear what you would normally wear to church,” was Google’s helpful response. So we’re back to the tartan dress and knee socks, then, because I only ever go to church for weddings, funerals and, now, christenings. Clearly funeral garb is out. Google further informs me that wedding outfits are out too, because they’re too formal – especially given that we’ll be having an informal barbecue after the ceremony. Terry informs me that the green dress I’ve been lusting after for a week now is also out, on account of it costing £100, and only being suitable for those times when I find myself transported back in time to a gentler age, when people got ridiculously dressed up for dinner. Or for when we go to Ascot, which is, oooh, never.
And so I turned to my wardrobe. In it, I found:
Nine pairs of jeans
13 black dresses of some description. Oops.
About nine or ten other dresses suitable only for weddings, travelling back in time, Ascot, and other super-dressy occasions which I can’t even begin to imagine now. When DID I think I was going to wear that gold prom-dress-that-could-actually-pass-for-an-informal-wedding-dress, I wonder?
Three summer dresses that I’ve had for several years, waiting for that elusive sunny day that has never, ever arrived. One is too casual, one can only really be worn when I visit the 1950s, and the third makes me flash my boobs every time I lean forward slightly. Oh, and I hate it.
Too many vest tops to count.
A large number of sweaters and cardigans, all super-casual
NO TROUSERS! I just realised I have absolutely NO TROUSERS! At all. Only dresses and jeans. How did this happen? HOW?
Six skirts, all suitable for either the office job I don’t have, or wearing to the beach.
Sundry tops left over from the days when I used to go clubbing. (Note: I can’t actually remember the last time I went clubbing.)
A bunch of other stuff like shorts, gym clothes, etc.
Of all of this, the only things I wear on a regular basis are the jeans, vests and cardigans. So yes, I think I have a problem. Actually, I think most of this problem comes from the fact that I work from home and, er, hardly ever go out anywhere. There’s just rarely a need for me to be anything other than totally casual, and I have a hard time finding clothes that fit me properly, too (this is why I don’t own any pairs of trousers) so I’ve been living in jeans for years now.
Looks like I’m spending the weekend having a huge clear out, then…
