“Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure”

This quote on photography, by writer Tony Benn, is a quote that I can FULLY relate to, after returning from my annual surf holiday in Newquay, Cornwall. Newquay is such a sleepy little town, but with much mysterious hidden vibrance and magic, and its own quaint little character. A far cry from your average nostalgic seaside holiday spot, the majority of people who eat, play, rest and surf there, are locals. And the locals are always extremely welcoming and friendly to tourists and travellers. Probably because, they are sitting smugly and quite content at the fact that they are locals. And that this beautiful little gem on the coast is the place they call home.

Every year that I visit Cornwall, one thing I can’t leave home without is my camera. And every year, once I arrive back home, huffing and puffing unpacking my bags and oogling in the mirror at my new found freckles, I remember “Oh, the photographs!” The digital pictures on my laptop screen bring back the memories from my spring time trip, and they are enough to infuse my heart and my head, and keep my brain (and my secret hippy at heart) ticking over until its a year later, and time to visit that beautiful little place again!

This year however, there was a new twist to the photographs I viewed on my computer screen with my family and my boyfriend. Every visit to Cornwall contained at least a couple of days of surfing. Days where I would spend the first few hours fighting against the waves, cringing in my wetsuit (which is really just a second layer of skin and does not do my lumps and bumps much justice) and realising that my upper body strength would give not even Mr Bean a run for his money. But after I get over the overwhelming “KILL ME NOW” state of mind… I generally begin to realise I’m maybe not as unfit as I thought I was (But still, not the fittest, being honest here people!) And when I actually get the hang of surfing again, after a year on the bench, standing up off that bench and standing up on my surf board, is the most rewarding and magical feeling you can ever imagine.

And then there is the huge anti climax.

Where is the evidence to prove this truly awesome moment? Fair enough I can live with the self satisfaction, but its a bit rubbish returning home with not even a photograph with me, in all my lumps and bumps and embarassing glory This year, however, the surf school that my friend Dominique and I went with, happened to have their own in house professional surf photographer. You know the old saying, a photograph speaks a thousand words? Well, no more words from me. I’ll let these long awaited and anticipated photographs do all the talking.

Come on people, we ALL have them. Those little times in life when you chuckle away to yourself, feeling rather smug at some unpredicted self satisfaction. Euirpides, a greek tragic dramatist, once wrote “Short is the joy that guilty pleasure brings” That is very true… But in this case, the truth doesn’t hurt! The following things are cheeky wee things or happenings that I like, muchly.

1. Finding a biscuit or other munchy type thing in your bag (thats still within ‘eat by’ date) that you had forgotten about.

2. Discovering soggy money notes in the pockets of washed jeans. Especially when the jeans are not yours, but you are the one doing the washing.

3. When you go to use the public toilets you have to pay to get into, and there is already an extra 20p credit in the turnstall because some idiot didn’t have change.

4. When vending machines go crazy, and give you two packets of sweeties when you only paid for one.

5. When people unknowingly put an extra sugar in your tea. No complaints there.

6. When your wee granny gives you a fiver to top up your phone, and doesn’t listen when you repeat for the millionth time that you’ve had a contract phone since high school.

7. When there is JUST enough milk left for one cup of coffee. Perfecto! Insert evil laugh here.

8. When you come home to a cold (but still brilliant) dinner in the fridge and you’ve actually already eaten. Double whammy. Can’t offend mum now eh?

9. When you’re at work and a mother refers to you to her wee infant as ‘the lady’ and not ‘the girl’. The lady will throw you out this shop if you don’t stop crying! Damn right I will.

10. When people ask if your tattoos/piercings were sore, and you say ‘nah’ very casually. People love to hear that… But really darling, I’m lying through my teeth. It was the worst pain in my life and I cried like a wee girl. Ehhhm, I mean, a lady!

A splinter of a second after HE called I knew I had to do something drastic and quickly air brush myself into eye popping, jaw dropping gorgeousness.
It’s never good news when the ex comes knocking.
And now that SHE was……something had to be done.

A year since the man stepped into my premises no amount of coaxing, flattering, sweet-talking, back rubbing had smoothed him into talking about the mysterious ‘Former’. Sneakily I have often, I admit, searched through his wallet and papers in search of a stray love note or at least a toothy Polaroid which would give me a glimpse of what the lady looked like.

But all in vain.

Today a whole of 13 months, 2 weeks and 14 hours later however the curtain was finally to be raised. At last I was to rest my eyes on the Woman at dinner tonight. So effervescent was my excitement that I spent the entire afternoon speculating and getting drunk on an abandoned bottle of Vodka.

Speculation no.1
The woman was stunning.

She had to be.
Why else would he possibly keep me from the details?
Surely the guy was just being a sweetheart and saving me the heartburn.
Possibly because i knew her already.
Maybe she was a MODEL!
Maybe I had seen her already on a billboard or a magazine cover and salivated over her dress..or, worse, her perfect booty… in front of him!

He must have cracked into a nasty smug smirk at the very sight of my girlish envy!

God!

What would I do when she struts through that door looking like a groomed little peacock ready to perch on a catwalk?
I absolutely couldn’t be looking at her with puppy eyes between serving her appetizers and rummaging around the apartment for my autograph book!

That would leave him snugly satisfied with his prowess over women for the rest of the year!!!!!

Instead.
Instead I would turn the tables and make the gorgeous little thing go vra vra vroom at the very sight of me.

That’s what I would do, yes.

Tipsily I ran into the bath and turned on the shower.
With 2 hours in hand I still had enough time to transform myself into a strapping little Swan. I was a pro at conversions of the kind. Walk in the park. Piece a’cake.
One foot on the bathtub other on the shower floor I was squishily scraping away at my leg with a razor.

Quick.
Now the nail polish.
Toothbrush in mouth I tugged and pulled at my toe nails with clippers.

Maybe there was still time for a hurried visit to the beauty parlour for a nippy pedicure?
Maybe not.
Hurriedly, HURRIEDLY I jumped from one foot to the other trying to scrub my muggy looking feet into civility.
And that’s when it happened.

Well sometime around then anyway.

Speculation no.2

Daintily as i stepped out of the bath, carefully trying to get into character early and act as graceful as one can possibly look and feel in a hideous green bathrobe, I slipped on something….possibly some of the ultra luscious, super lubricating hair serum I accidentally dropped on the floor and landed, ungracefully, perhaps a tad pathetically, right on my head.

When I woke up I was in the hospital.

Looking concerned and with a buck-toothed, blinking girl, probably still in school, HE stood close by.
Through her mouthful of teeth the lady who had just cost me a twisted ankle, a couple of bruises, a nasty slash on my posterior and a visit to the hospital blinked and said

“I have heard so much about you.”

I grinned a toothy grin and wished I was in a state to bonk my head against the wall.

It was a simple case of ‘fabulous’ gone ‘frumpy’. The customary Friday night dinner had followed a movie. We cabbed it to our recent favourite joint and sat snuggled under a circular overhead lamp in a cubby, which eerily resembled an interrogation room. (more…)

Last week my grumpy old Landlady finally threw me out.
It was coming, I could tell, for some time now. She has had her scrawny eyes on me ever since I set the kitchen on fire.
When she ultimately gave me the kick, she chose to be nice and had the packers wait outside while she consoled me. It would be alright, she said, the University hostel (where I was destined to move in) didn’t have any kitchen and so I was completely safe, no chance of being thrown out ever again.

The transition from the 700 sq. ft. appartment to the 200 nothing sq. ft. hostel room has not been what one would call ‘rippleless’. For starters, there is the room mate.
To be fair, I have never been much of a team player. But even if I played football I wouldn’t be able to tackle the mini monstrosity I now sleep with.
She is a nice girl, of course, quick on a joke and all that. But what really defines her identity, what really sets her apart, marks her out in a crowd is her absolute, vehement, stubborn reluctance to take a bath.
That suits me fine.
I am all for individual choice and all that. And truly who am I to question her personal principles about hygiene. But if only she wouldn’t insist on sharing my clothes!!!!!!!
Every sleeve she slips her arms into, every scarf she winds around her unwashed neck becomes a blackhole of impenetrable odour.
I have tried to ‘introduce’ her to the idea of deodorants or anything else, which might, unassumingly obstruct her personal stamp of fragnance, but in vain.
Of late, when she is asleep and unaware I have (guiltily) sprayed around her and under her to help pierce through the halo of stench. But nothing has been of much help.

To add to my current misery the lady in question has recently acquired a man (!!!!). With this creature, who is either sensually challenged or has been rendered ‘breathless’ by love, she romps around rather noisily till the wee hours of the morning while I, loveless and deprived, study what Bordwell has to say about the debatable concept of Modernity(!!!)

HmmmPh.
Tough year ahead, I can tell.

We all know that Model Naomi Campbell has a bit of a temper on her, so it should come as no surprise to hear of her recent arrest after her luggage went missing at Heathrow. Apparently she came in on time with just 2 bags and got pretty out of control when one of them went missing. This resulted in her allegedly arguing and lashing out at police officers who eventually arrested her. Apparently there were plenty of other people whose luggage went missing and none of them decided to lose the plot and react in this way, I do often wonder if some models and celebrities live on a different planet to the rest of us! (more…)

2 ‘o’ clock in the morning.
Stomach’s yearning.
Eyes sleepless yet longing for respite.
It’s been exactly 50 hours 20 minutes and a couple of seconds since I launched into my new diet.
Life since then has been about ducking desires and astute asceticism.
It’s not an easy deal.
Every fifteen seconds or so I remind myself of the exact stratagem to be adopted, ‘Brown before white, if you wanna eat right”……
It’s not an easy deal.
They are yet to cook up a whole wheat blackforest cake fit for human consumption.
So I grit my teeth and barricade the means of consumption.
2 ‘o’ clock is the moment of its reinforcement.
In my mind a half eaten slice of cheesecake, a recent inmate in my refrigerator, was beginning to grow.

The axe had to come down on the extra pounds sooner or later. The time had come, I’d decided a good time back. My new found interest in getting my life in order had reinforced the need for the hourglass with virgin intensity.
It had proved far harder than I had imagined it to be.
Incorporating the diet into my life had taken time.
For the first few days I had dilly-dallied a bit, I confess. But it was Easter and little could be done to keep a red blooded girl from food on festival days.
A week later when I still hadn’t managed to tackle it I told myself such transitions took time and planning.
Accordingly, I browsed the net and noted down important pointers to help me with my metamorphosis.
These took 4 whole days to sink in.
Once the message was assimilated, I took my time to enjoy the greatest joys of life, for the very last time.
It was a prolonged goodbye, sunk in crates of beer and peppered with the last traces of Cheetos.
When I recovered, I was a new girl.
Promptly I sauntered off to the green grocer’s and came back with veggies I had only seen in encyclopedias.
Morning began with stringy sprouts.
Tasteless and altogether unfit for ingestion.
As I chewed I had the image of a sweater strung in my head. Thousands of shreds of wool drawn out of them…..like hair off a blonde headed dolly……
No. Breakfast wouldn’t be sufficed by this alone I decided determinedly, spitting out the remnants of the fiber out into the sink.
So I sank back into routine and selected a big bowl of syrupy cereal instead.
Munching on the chocolate coated flakes I felt fulfilled.
Sighing with pleasure I decided the afternoon would be the starting point.

Afternoon came.
I skipped the meal, by then feeling guilty as hell over the cereal and convinced that it had added an extra inch to my waistline.
By evening I coul swallow a whole cow,horn and tail and everything in between.
Accordingly, I binged like a child, yet untouched by the grime of the calorie counter.

That was then. In the 36 hours that had followed I had struggled to stay afloat.
Bursting at the seams to keep myself from surrendering to the roadside muffin store.
Turning green under the pressure to resist the insurmountable temptation of fried chicken.

UGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Resistance, I had taken, to a new gastronomical height.

After Chris Fountain was the favourite to win Dancing on Ice for so long, I couldn’t help but be a little surprised when it was Suzanne Shaw who actually won on the night! There seems to be a lot of mixed opinions on the results of the show, with one group of people saying that Chris was robbed of his glory and others who think Suzanne well and truly chose the right time to pull her flawless performance out of the bag. What do Girlz Night mag readers think? After being the favourite for so long, were you disappointed not to see Chris win, or do you feel that Suzanne was the right person to win on the night?… (more…)