The Best Procrastination.

Maybe I'm becoming overly obssessed and should just start the 100 pages of reading I have to do for tomorrow instead of just sitting with 'Reading Poetry; An Introduction' open infront of me, whilst finding videos of David Gandy. I don't know. Maybe.

BUT OMG LOOK AT HIM.

I want to go to Milan and meet an Italian on a bike that looks like him and who brings me flowers in the rain and who casually asks to marry me in a cafe in a square with a fountain.

19.

So, first things first, I turned 19!!!

If I'm honest (and I do always try to be) I wasn't really looking forward to my 19th Birthday.

Before you throw rotten veg at me for being such a miserable old fart, which would definitely be a reasonable reaction (not looking forward to birthdays is dull and should be criminal) and judge me horribly (because I am normally silly excited about my birthday - and actually, pretty much everyone else’s too - to the point that I'm actually annoying to others around me), I'll tell you why.

1. It felt way too old. I know, I know I'm hardly applying for a bus pass yet (although I am knitting – more on that later), but my final year as a teenager seems like quite a big, and not particularly jolly, deal. It definitely implies adulthood and responsibilities and own washing and no more glitter and animal socks.

2. All my friends were away!! My birthday was on September 28^th (I am A W A R E how behind I am) and bloody Bristol didn’t start until the next day but all other unis had started nearly two weeks before hand (it was a miserable two weeks) so very few people were about. It was all v emotional I have to say.

3. I was going to uni the next day so was majorly stressing out about this massive rite of passage life changing event that was taking place the next day. So was a bit of a state really. You know me and my anxiety. My poor mother. Also, going to Bristol the next day meant that I didn’t reallyyy want to be horribly hungover (not the best way to meet the folk you’ll be living with for the next year) so has absolutely no idea what to do in order to celebrate my birthday. Stay in? Go for dinner? Clubbing? Drinks? Cocktails? You also know me and my chronicle indecision.

But, in the end, it was fab!!

I decided to have a small select few over for classy celebrations and we had a really lovely time/goodbye.

Polly (of previous post. That one) came down all the way from Manchester which made me very happy and was really very kind of her.

AND THEN, guess who Polly bought with her when she waltzed through the door just as we were cracking open the champagne?? Only Rain bloody Osgood!!! All the way from Brighton. For me. As a surprise. What a total babe.

I loved that everyone else knew and I had absolutely no idea. I’m such a goon (or just very easily influenced by champagne. Probably both.)

 

 

 

It was a really, really lovely evening. Spending it with people that I love the most (apart from three of my girls who were respectively in Leeds, Norwich and Birmingham) in a small, intimate way was so perfect. It was also a very lovely (and really quite heart breaking way)to say goodbye.

 

Declaration of Love

So I'm finally off to Bristol on Saturday. All my friends went off to uni a week ago and I miss them so I'm superduper excited - although a little nervous - and I think that before I go I should do something crazy. Like, something totally mental. I've died the under bit of my hair at the back a really dark brown so that when I tie it up you can see a flash of dark, and it also peeks through when it's down.

However, although this does look, if I say so myself, v cool, and quite 90s grunge with my died blonde hair, it's hardly an act of insane rebellion before I leave for my new student life. So I want to declare my love for someone, too, because it's an insane thing to do and I think will feel liberating or something, and then I'll never see them again. So it won't be embarassing or awful. Is this making sense?

The only problem is that there isn't actually anyone who I have an undying passionate love for who doesn't know. That does rather make it sound like I go about telling people that I have an undying passionate love for them on a regular basis. I don't. I do fall in love randomly with people I see on the bus or the tube or walking down the street or serving me in shops quite a lot, but I rarely declare my love for them (actually, make that never) and I'm actually quite reserved and fussy when it comes to guys incase they're not the The Love of My Life and he's actually standing behind them. (I KNOW. Everyone tells me I'm absurd). My very specific 'type' - consisting predominantly of being Italian -  also makes all this undying love malarky a bit tricky.

BUT, when I was on the bus today heading off to Primark to buy 16 mens t-shirts - I got carried away - I saw Allessandro (probably his name) who used to work in my local cafe Nero, where I go a lot, and who is a) Italian and B) VERY ATTRACTIVE and I'd forgotten quite how beautiful he is and quite how much I want to marry him. If I've ever had an unspoken, passionate and undying love for anyone, it's for him. My best friend attempted to make a video of him singing Happy Birthday to me as an 18th birthday present because she knew it would make me lityerally hysterical. That's how much I love him. (He wasn't at work the day she went in with her camera, sadly.)

So, I need to declare my undying and passionate love for him. And the run away. Very fast.
If I see him, I'll do it. Errm...

Wise Words and Inspiration from Valentino

I went print crazy today and wore my low back Aztec print vest with my silk and fringed purple baroque swirl kimono and white city shorts. I love a good bit of print and colour clashing.

I have also been inspired by Harper's to get more red in my wardrobe. And like, actually wear it too. Valentino said that 'red is the colour that never fades into the background' and I think that it's time I stop fading into the background and started standing out a bit more. No one's ever going to fall in love with me if they can't even see me.

This inspiration came about because a recent Harper's image was needed for a banner on the website, so it needed to work horizontally. It was my task to set about finding this image, which was lovely because I got to trawl through the well section - the bit with all the beautiful pictures and fashion shoots - of all the magazines. I found a couple which I thought might work and Lisa and I then went through them and picked out our favourites. It took me nearly all day which, seeing as how I'm the girl who takes several old copies of Vogue and Harper's and Elle babysitting with me so that I can spend hours tearing out photos and images and ads to stick on my wall, it was pretty much a perfect day.

The final choice that they chose from the two pictures we sent them was of a girl standing in the desert in a scarlet chiffon gown that was caught spectacularly in the wind. I guess Valentino knows his stuff...

Failing the red tactic, I might just go about shouting. Here, as soon as I open my mouth I get more attractive. A man serving me coffee today told me I have a 'beautiful accent'.

Then, finally, when all else has proved useless, I'll dare to stare. Several people I know swear by it.