I leave the house to go to the supermarket. In one hand: my wallet, into which I have cunningly crammed my phone. In the other: a huge pile o’rubbish, destined for the bin that sits outside the door.
What I threw into the bin: my wallet and phone.
What I tried to carry with me into the car: the huge pile o’rubbbish.
If it was the first time it had happened, it wouldn’t be so bad, but, er no.
In conclusion: crawling headfirst into a rubbish bin = not a great way to start the day. But the way I am apparently destined to start many more of mine…
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
Today, the nail polish remover had its comeuppance, in a particularly neat reversal of fortune which saw me spend 15 frustrating minutes trying to remove my nail polish with…. eye makeup remover.
Clearly the nail polish remover had switched places with the eye makeup remover in the night, in a cunning plan to waste my time (and my eye makeup remover, now I come to think of it) and make me feel foolish.
Either that or I have some weird kind of blindness to things with the words “remover” in their names.
Whichever it is, I somehow don’t think Mensa will be calling anytime soon…
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
The latest installment of The Cold That Won’t Die has left me feeling run-down and miserable, so instead of getting out and about, and clocking up new Random Acts of Stupidity to amaze you with, here’s one from last Saturday when, as you know, Terry and I had some friends round for a small soiree.
Last time on “Ways to Totally Screw Up Your Party”, the scene had been set: everything was in place, including my massive Second Head, the heating was on the blink, and I was busily trying to use wine to take the edge off my latest cold. (Note: it kinda works!) All but two of our guests had arrived, so when there was a knock on the door, I, of course, assumed that it must be them. After all, who else would be knocking on my door on a Saturday night?
Terry was upstairs trying to fix the heating, so I headed to the door and threw it open, a welcoming smile upon my face. There, standing looking at me expectantly, and clutching bags full of what looked like food and drink, was a complete stranger.
The stranger looked to be about 18 or 19, and seemed to think I should be expecting him, so I quickly wracked my brains and concluded that SOMEONE must have invited him to the party. It could’ve been the friends we were still waiting on, it could’ve been Terry – hell, it could even have been me, posting a general invitation on Twitter or Facebook and then immediately forgetting all about it.
The young man at the door clearly HADN’T forgotten all about it, though, and so, rather than embarrassing him by admitting I had no clue who on earth he was, I decided to try and fake it. Note to self: never do that.
“Hiiiiiiiiii!” I said brightly, opening the door a little wider, and stepping back, making that universal arm gesture that says, “Hello, and welcome to my humble home! Won’t you come on in and pull up a seat?”
Instead, the young man simply handed me one of his carrier bags which did, indeed, contain some soft drinks and what looked like party food. This merely served to confirm my suspicions: he was here for my “party” and so I glanced into the bag and made some appropriately grateful noises. “Oooh, lovely!” I said. “Thanks very much!” And again I stepped back from the door and made my “come on in!” arm gesture.
Well, my new friend looked at me a little funny at that point, so I guessed I hadn’t been effusive enough in my thanks. When he handed me a SECOND bag of food, then, I made a point of cooing over it and thanking him profusely. And then I stepped back and gestured for him to come in again.
By this point I was getting cold standing at the door, and my guest’s reluctance to enter the house was starting to feel a little awkward. I don’t know what it was that prevented me from actually saying the words “Come on in!” rather than just making the gesture – perhaps I was just trying to put off the inevitable moment when I’d have to introduce him to the rest of the guests (My hastily concocted plan for this, by the way, was to usher him into the living room, shout, “Hey, everyone, look who’s here!” and then run upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom), but by this point enough was enough. I had just opened my mouth to finally just come right out with it and ask him to COME INTO THE DAMN HOUSE ALREADY, when he reached into the rather large bag I now noticed he was carrying, and produced…
TWO PIZZAS.
Yes, it was the pizza guy. Bringing the pizzas and other items Terry had ordered not thirty minutes earlier. I’d use this as my excuse, but actually, I’d heard him make the call and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. GOD.
And that’s the sorry tale of how I came to try and entice the pizza guy into my home on a cold, dark night. It’s also the tale of how we had to find a new pizza delivery place, because I somehow don’t think that young man will have gotten over my “Mrs Robinson” act yet. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Terry can never get a pizza in this town again, unless he goes and picks it up himself.
Sorry, Terry. (And sorry, Pizza Guy, whoever you may be…)
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
This week I’ve been going to the gym on a semi-regular basis. I’ve done Body Combat. I’ve done Body Pump. I’ve done Blast Abs. I would’ve done Body Attack, but …. well, we all know what happened when I tried to go to Body Attack….
Anyway, I’ve been a busy girl, is what I’m saying. And even although I’ve done more exercise this week than I’ve done in the past couple of months, I’m pleased to report that I have managed not to harm myself in any way, which is no small achievement when you’re as clumsy as I am.
Then, last night? Last night I was lying in bed, drifting off to sleep, as you do, when I decided to roll from my back onto my side. You know, the kind of small, insignificant movement we all do hundreds of times in our lives, without even giving it a second though. I had almost completed this delicate manoeuvre when….
PING!
Something “went” in my back. There was a sensation not unlike someone trying to stab me, and then suddenly my entire torso was flooded with pain, which somehow managed to spread from my back to my chest in mere seconds. It was really quite alarming, and my piteous moaning was enough to wake Terry, who is luckily quite used to this sort of thing by now.
“Terry!” I said. “Terry, I think I’m having a heart attack! There’s a pain in my chest, and also in my back, and OMG, I am totally having a heart attack!”
Now, you might expect that this news would cause Terry to leap from the bed and call for an ambulance, but instead he simply opened one eye and regarded me in exasperation.
“You’re not having a heart attack,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”
Ha, like THAT was going to happen! I regaled him with the full story, about how I’d tried to turn over, and had felt something “go” in my back, and at this point, Terry interrupted me.
“Oh, right,” he said. “A twang. You’ve had a twang. Go back to sleep.”
“A TWANG?” I said, forgetting my ongoing heart attack for a moment. “Is that a medical term?”
Terry opened one eye. “It’s just a twang,” he said. “They’re painful, twangs, but it’s not a heart attack. It’ll be sore for a while. Go back to sleep.”
And with that, he rolled over and went back to sleep himself, leaving me and my TWANG to get on with it.
I was still alive this morning, so I’m assuming it was, indeed, a “twang” and not the heart-attack I’d suspected. The muscle that “twanged” though, is still really freaking sore, meaning that every time I try to do simple things, like reach for a cup of coffee or try to wrestle my tights out of Rubin’s mouth, it will “twang” again, and I will be forced to whine like a small child.
Needless to say, I did not go to the gym this morning. I did learn a new word, though…
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
A few weeks ago, I started using a new hair conditioner. It’s called ‘Radiant Red’ and as the name suggests, it’s made especially for us redheads. (And very good it is too, by the way: you should totally buy it. Unless, of course, you don’t actually have red hair, in which case that would be a bit silly.)
Anyway. The conditioner is called “Radiant Red” and trust me, this is not a reference to how my hair looks after I’ve used it, but a reference to what the conditioner itself looks like. It is red. Oh so very red! Radiant red, you could say. Or you could just say, “Oh my holy hell, I wish I hadn’t bought white towels now. And a white bathroom suite.” Because trust me, this stuff gets absolutely everywhere. One thing I’ve learned about myself since I’ve been using it is that I apparently flick my head around like a demented person when I’m in the shower. (WHY?) I know this because every time I use the conditioner, the bathroom ends up looking like THAT scene from Psycho. GOD.
Luckily, the stuff washes off. Not so luckily, I am the person who has to wash it off, which I guess is only fair, really, given that I’m the one doing all the head flicking.
So, yesterday I decided to have a shower while Terry headed out to walk the dog. I thought this was quite cunning of me, because not only did it get me out of having to be outside, where it is cold, it also gave me a good excuse for not answering the phone while Terry was out. Or, indeed, the door.
The postman arrived at the door with a package for me while I was in the shower. I didn’t even hear him knock, on account of how Rubin wasn’t there to throw a complete fit at the sound of someone walking up the driveway, so I continued to merrily apply my RADIANT RED conditioner to my hair, in blissful ignorance of the fact that there was now a package waiting for me. So the postman took the package to our neighbour, and a few minutes later Terry arrived home, let Rubin into the house and then headed over to our neighbour’s house to collect the package.
For reasons that still aren’t clear to me, he did not take his keys with him when he did this. So the door closed behind him, and locked, forcing him to knock to gain re-entry.
I, meanwhile, was still in the shower, still coated in RADIANT RED, and still completely unaware that all this had happened. So when Terry knocked on the door and Rubin started a hysterical barking in response to this, I was confused. Apparently Rubin was home, but Terry was not? Had Rubin made his OWN way home from his walk then, and somehow let himself into the house? What had happened to Terry? And why was Rubin barking hysterically? Was it… OH MY GOD… could it be that something had happened to Terry while out walking, and Rubin was, at this very moment, trying to get me to follow him to the scene of the accident, where I would no doubt find Terry stuck down a well, calling feebly for help while his faithful hound raced home for reinforcements?
Well, no. Terry had just locked himself out, and so it was that I was forced to abandon my lovely warm shower and run the naked gauntlet of the freezing cold house, scattering RADIANT RED as I went, in order to let him in. By the time I got back to the bathroom it literally looked like a massacre had just taken place. The walls were splattered with RED. The floor was splattered with RED. The ceiling? RED. (HOW?) The bath? Filled with a pool of RED, that I swear to God, looked exactly like blood. Seriously, I am still amazed at how far that stuff goes. I’m still finding bits of it now, every time I go in there. And I really wish I had thought to take a photo at the time but clearly I’d more pressing matters to deal with at the time, so all I have to show for The Incident is this:
The Afterbath
They were on the floor of the bathroom as I swept by them, and the photo actually doesn’t do justice to the sheer amount of RED I had to clear up. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
Oh, and that package Terry went to collect for me? Contained two more bottles of the RADIANT RED. I’m not even joking.
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
Remember how last week I started doing The Friday Five again and I was all, “I am going to do this every Friday now for the rest of my life, only maybe not”?
You all thought I forgot yesterday, didn’t you?
Well I did not! No, I did not forget The Friday Five, but it seems The Friday Five forgot me, because the website I get the questions from didn’t get updated at all yesterday. And hasn’t been updated today either, at the time of writing. So, what basically seems to have happened is that I started doing The Friday Five, and The Friday Five stopped. Maybe forever. So, in other words, I broke The Friday Five. GOD.
Instead, here is a Random Act of Stupidity that took place in the early hours of Friday morning, so is still somewhat “Friday” themed…
So, because I am lazy, I have either ordered all my Christmas gifts from the internet, or I have delegated Terry to buy them. Trust me, I totally suck at buying gifts, it’s for the best. On Thursday afternoon, then, one of these packages was delivered, and I opened it, checked the gift inside… then, for reasons that aren’t particularly clear even to me, I placed it back inside the packaging and put the packaging on my desk.
Then, a few hours later, I picked it up, carried it downstairs, and placed it in the recycling bin outside.
The recycling bin that Terry later wheeled down to the bottom of the driveway, for collection in the early hours of Friday morning.
D’OH!
For some reason, though, luck was on my side that night. This was unusual in itself, because luck is hardly EVER on my side, but suddenly, as I lay drifting off to sleep at about 1am, the image of that parcel came floating into my head. I saw it sitting on my desk. I saw myself walking downstairs with it. I saw, as if from a great distance, my hand reaching out and throwing it in the recycling. And then, with a small shriek, I sat bolt upright and shouted, “OMG! I HAVE THROWN THE PARCEL IN THE BIN!”
Then I lept from the bed and rushed to the window, where I peered down at the dark street outside. Sure enough, there, at the bottom of the driveway, stood the bin, waiting to be collected. I actually have no idea why I went to the window and looked at it, to be honest. I mean, did I think I’d be able to hear the feeble cries of the package as it threw itself helplessly against the sides of the bin, shouting, “let me oooouuuttttt!”? Because I couldn’t.
Anyway, because Terry is a chivalrous gentleman, he volunteered to go to the rescue of the package, so I jumped back into bed and lay there, as snug as a bug in a rug, listening to the sounds of him going outside and rummaging through the rubbish at 1am on a freezing November night, his dressing gown whipping friskily around him as he did so.
He did manage to find it, though. And that’s how it came to pass that one of my friends/family (because it could be either! Hell, it could be yoooouuuu!) will receive a gift that has spent a few hours of its life inside my recycling bin this Christmas.* It’s the thought that counts, no?
* I feel I have to point out that the gift itself was well-wrapped at the time, so it did not suffer for its time inside the bin. And it’s all paper in there anyway. No gifts were injured in the making of this entry, I promise!
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
A couple of years ago, some cataclysmic event or other happened to my computer (clearly it was so cataclysmic all memory of it has been wiped from my mind, because I’m dammed if I can remember what it was) and I was forced to re-enter all of my Outlook contacts by hand.
Not long after this, I found out my mum was no longer receiving email from me. At all. Everyone else was receiving my messages just fine, and she was getting emails from everyone else but me (it was actually a pretty sweet deal for her, to be honest), so clearly we had a mystery on our hands.
And clearly I couldn’t be bothered investigating this mystery too deeply, or, indeed, at all, because rather than try to find out WHY this was happening, I chose to do absolutely nothing about it, and blithely continued firing off emails to my mother’s email address. This is why my childhood dream of being Nancy Drew when I grew up was never realised, obviously.
Now, my mum and I are close. I tell her things I probably wouldn’t tell other people. So it came as something of a horrible surprise when some guy in Nova Scotia contacted me to let me know he’d been receiving email from me for quite some now, and by the way, how was that rash coming along and had I ever located the source of that funny smell in the kitchen?
My mum’s name is Norma. My mystery correspondent was called Norman. You can see what I did there, can’t you?
Of course, after that, I totally learned my lesson and I was always really careful when sending email to make sure I was sending them to the right person, and not, say, sending them to be published on a national news website. Oh no, wait, my mistake: I didn’t learn my lesson at all, did I? Which is why, when my mum used the “send to a friend” function on the Sky News website last weekend to send me a link to a story, I just hit “reply”, without realising that my reply was going, not to my mum, but to the wesbite’s comment section.
Oops.
When I got a “Thank you for posting your comment on Sky News!” email a few minutes later I was, like, really confused and thought it must be some kind of mistake. And it was. But it was my mistake. D’oh.
I mean, it was an easy mistake to make. Anyone could’ve done it. Well, anyone with the brain of a gnat, obviously. And when I realised my mistake, I obviously learned my lesson for good this time, and made sure I never did the same thing ever again, didn’t I?
Er, no. Because Outlook automatically saves the email address of everyone I reply to into my address book (note to self: make it not do that any more), which now contains entries for ‘Mum’, ‘Mum – work’ and ‘Mum – Sky News’.
Guess which one I’ve been sending my emails to?
This is why, if you happen to have visited the Sky News website this week you may have noticed a long comment from me asking someone to pick me up a certain brand of face cream next time they happen to be in Tesco. You’d know it was me because, er, my full name would be on it, plus my email signature, containing links to all of my websites.
Um, sorry, Sky News! But if you could send me that face cream, that would be grand, thanks!
(Note: although I did get another “Thanks for posting a comment on our website!” email, I can’t seem to find the comment in question, so presumably someone at Sky removed it. And probably banned me, into the bargain. Which would be fair enough, under the circumstances…)
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
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.
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
I know you’d really like it to be that bit closer to the weekend than it actually is, and I’m sorry to disappoint you on that score, but today is TUESDAY. Not Wednesday. Tuesday. So when you posted that special ‘Wednesday’ feature at The Fashion Police? You know, the one that’s only ever posted on a Wednesday? And when you opened it with the words, "It’s Wednesday!"? You were wrong. And also: stupid. And you are really, really lucky you didn’t get dozens of comments from people telling you that.
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
Every time I decide to take a vacation, or do something else fun, there’s a little part of my brain (probably the same part that makes my eyebrows itchy when I haven’t tweezed them for a day, and convinces me I’m dying every time I get a headache) that pipes up and says, "You know, I bet I could ruin this exciting/important event, purely by making myself look like a total freaking idiot. I think I will use fake tan to do it."
So it is that I’ve gone through almost all of the important days in my life with bright orange feet and a bit of a strange smell about me – you know, like the kind of smell you get from FAKE TAN.
Now, before I go any further down this road (this road that you can already see the end of, dear reader, can’t you?), I just want to pre-empt some of the comments I always get when I write about my fake tanning exploits, by saying that yes, I KNOW. I know fake tan makes you look orange. I know it often goes streaky. I know it has that strange, slightly mouldy smell, and leaves a Turin Shroud style outline of your body on the bedsheets. And yes, I know there’s nothing wrong with pale skin. I actually like pale skin. It is very lovely. I know all of these things.
BUT.
The thing is, my skin isn’t so much "white" as it’s "mottled grey". Seriously, if you ever happened to be lost on a dark night, you could use my bare legs to light your way home, no problem. Think Renee Zellweger, only with a greyish tinge. That’s me. So, while I’m happy to embrace my paleness for fifty weeks of the year (and let’s face it, with the weather we get here, the only parts of my skin that are exposed most of the time are my face and hands, and sometimes not even them. See ‘Scotland, and how it sucks‘ from earlier this week for reference), on the very rare occasions when my legs are revealed by shorts or bikinis, I do like them to have a bit of colour to them. Just a bit, mind. I use self-tan moisturiser and aim for the "sun-kissed glow" promised on the bottle rather than the full-on "Footballer’s Wife Orange" that so many seem to favour. I just want to take the edge of the greyness, ya know? IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
Apparently so. As the years have passed, I’ve tried just about every brand of fake tan on the market. Some have worked out, some… haven’t. Actually, let’s be honest: most haven’t. And yet, still I persist with this fool’s mission. You could call this the triumph of hope over reason, but let’s face it, you could also call it, "complete and utter stupidity", because that’s basically what it is.
You can see where I’m going with this story, can’t you?
Well, on Tuesday I decided to kick off the annual fake tan fiasco, so that I’d be all orange and streaky in time for my holiday. I picked Tuesday so that when the first application went horribly patchy, as I knew it would, I would still have time to apply further layers to even things out. No, that really DOESN’T sound like it would work, does it? Yeah, that’s because it doesn’t. Don’t try it at home, kids.
Obviously, the first application didn’t work out so good. In fact, I woke up on Wednesday looking like a jigsaw puzzle. So, naturally, I slapped some more of the stuff on. And now I kinda wish I’d just slapped myself instead, because that second layer of fake tan? Yeah, not so good.
This left me in an awkward position. (No, really: I had to stand around naked with my arms in the air for ages waiting for it to dry.) With only a few short days to go before I need to expose my mottled grey flesh to the world, I had somehow managed to acquire the Worst Tan in the History of the World Ever.
Well, I tried everything to get that tan off. I tried lemon juice. I tried hydrogen peroxide. I tried good old soap and water. (I didn’t try baking soda or the special fake tan remover you can get because we don’t OWN any baking soda, and the fake tan remover didn’t work the last time, so I wouldn’t really expect it to work this time, either). I tried getting down on my knees and praying. Finally, I tried the one thing I know works to at least some extent (and which I totally don’t recommend you ever try yourself because I don’t want you suing me when it all goes horribly wrong): nail polish remover. Yes, nail polish remover. It will generally take off the worst bits of a fake tan disaster, but like I said, I don’t recommend it, and it can only do so much – as it did in this case.
Then I said "Screw this," got out the fake tan bottle and slapped on some more.
No, I don’t know how it is I got to be this clever either. All I can say is that the early signs seem to be positive. If it doesn’t work out this time, I’m going to give up and hope it fades before Monday. And I would like to say that I’ve learned my lesson from this experience, but that would be a lie, so instead I will say, "Tune in next year for the next thrilling installement of ‘When Will Amber Learn That Fake Tan & Utter Stupidity Don’t Mix?’"
Um, anyone got any other fake tan removal tips? You know, just in case….
Hi, I'm Amber. I'm a full-time fashion/shoe blogger from the UK, and this is the story of my life, my clothes, and the International Man of Mystery Next Door. You can read more from me at my other blogs, The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman.
