clothes Archives - Nothing good rhymes with Charlotte

How to feel better about the way you dress

12/03/2017 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

I can count on one finger the number of times I’ve walked into an event and been 100% confident that I was wearing the right thing. It was my wedding day so I wore my wedding dress and I stand by that decision.

But the rest of the time, well, I’ve tried. Sometimes I’ve loved my top or my jeans or my ability to fit a vest top underneath anything in case of a draft. And other times, at best I’ve been unsure and at worst I’ve felt like a mess.

It’s only recently that I’ve acknowledged how much our self-esteem can be affected by how we feel about what we wear. I started listening to Dawn O’Porter’s podcast Get It On and it’s made me reassess my approach to clothes.

If you’re not familiar, the podcast is a series of half hour chats between Dawn and guests about how they dress. She’s interviewed lots of excellent people, including Dawn French, Fay Ripley, Chris O’Dowd and Jason Segel. The conversation is always fun – and often really funny – and all about what motivates each person when it comes to getting dressed, what they like and how they feel about clothes.

It really makes you appreciate the world of thoughts and feelings that everybody has about their appearance. I thought other people just fell out of bed and into the perfect outfit but GUESS WHAT it’s a process for everyone. It’s made me much happier about my wardrobe, and reminded me that clothes and deciding how you want to look should be fun.

As ever, a discovery that’s made me feel better is now on here for you to try should you wish to, along with it a list of rules I’m now living by when it comes to my clothes.

1: Remember who’s in charge

Oh hi, that’s you. The odd uniform, dress code, and unavoidable fancy dress party aside, most of the time it’s us who gets to call the shots about what we wear – not magazines, not adverts, and not some social media update about a fashion week with a hashtag you can’t decipher. It’s all up to us and the only rule we should follow is that we should feel good in what we put on. You can even wear red and pink together now and nobody will bat an eyelid, so go nuts.

2: Reserve the right to change your mind

Find me a person who can say they have never regretted an outfit and I will give you the LIAR. I’m from the pedal pusher, skirt-trouser, and Spice Girls-inspired platform trainer era, so if you want to chat about fashion faux-pas just walk this way. But it doesn’t matter, a risk or two won’t do you any harm. You’ve got to go with what you want and what feels right at the time. And worst case scenario, the laughs you’ll have with your children and grandchildren when you look back on photos of your hot pink cropped trousers will be priceless (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

3: Repeat after me: Bodies change and that’s OK

My hips have expanded loads in the last couple of years – they might as well just write CREATING SPACE IN CASE OF CHILD on my body in stretch marks and be done with it. And other things have changed too – my weight, my skin, my hair – because that’s what it is to be a person who is ageing at the traditional rate. Some things that used to fit no longer do, and other things that used to look wrong now look better. It’s just the way it goes, and as long as we’re happy with our bodies and our health, we just need to roll with how our wardrobe options change with time.

4: Have a regular clear-out

Shopping for clothes used to be my favourite activity; now I prefer having a clear-out and taking a load down to the charity shop. The rule is: if it no longer makes you feel good, it goes. It sounds brutal but it works. And I don’t mean that you then have to replace everything that’s gone, but that you focus more on the items that do bring you joy, vary what you wear them with, and generally build a happier relationship with your wardrobe. Or that when you do buy something new, you do so better informed about the criteria an item needs to meet in order to secure a place on your rail.

5: It’s OK that other people will wear different things

You can waste a lifetime walking into parties, restaurants and offices and feeling like you’re wearing the wrong thing because it’s different from what other people have on. But there’s no right and wrong way to dress. Unless you’ve accidentally shown up without anything on, or you’ve chosen to wear your wedding dress to someone else’s nuptials (I dreamt that I did this and may never recover), you haven’t got it wrong. It’s OK to have your own personality and tastes, and to make your own assessment about how many layers are appropriate for the current climate. Other people’s clothes should reflect what they like and what suits them, they shouldn’t be a source of anxiety for you.

School friends: The ones that didn’t get away

30/11/2014 by Charlotte 2 Comments

No-one is better at keeping you grounded than your school friends.

There aren’t many people who will take one look at your passport photograph and say: “No offence, but you look like a smackhead” or who will stand and laugh hard in your face whilst recounting (for the 58th time) the time you drank nine happy hour cocktails and danced alone on stage to The Jackson 5. (In my defence, it was my birthday and I looked excellent). But this is all in a day’s work for a friend who has known you since you were 13 and prided yourself on being able to recite every single word to Boyzone’s Love Me For A Reason (I can also do the official dance moves, if you’re interested).

It isn’t possible to keep hold of all your friends when you leave school, what with university and jobs and having to take charge of the weekly shop, so the ones you do manage to keep are all the more special. They’re the friends who have known you the longest, who have seen you through every bad haircut, fashion faux pas and unfortunate crush and, if you’re lucky, they’ll only mention each of them three or four times every time you see them. They’re kind like that.

All of a sudden your friendship shifts to suit your new adult lives. You’re no longer in the market for lunch break one-upmanship about who’s doing best in maths or getting off with who or how very dare she buy the same hot pants as you. Now we’re talking jobs and careers and – BLIMEY – marriage and babies, but we still throw in the odd anecdote from our younger days to stop us taking ourselves too seriously. (The one about the time I over-gesticulated and hurled my bracelet into the face of a stranger is one of my favourites, though I still don’t think she’d find it funny.)

These meet-ups are evidence that a joke can indeed remain funny forever. I have one friend with whom I have never managed to get through a drink or a meal without mentioning the time we went to see Shrek at the cinema and an unknown boy burped SO loud in my face that she and I were left helpless with laughter. I’m 29 now and it remains one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me, partly because surprise, aggressive burping is always amusing, but also because that moment really summed up my relationship with boys at that time – embarrassing, undignified, and often just a lot of hot air.

But aside from all the giggles and nostalgic chit chat about school trips and hair mascara and the time I thought blue and yellow braces would look good on my teeth (they didn’t), there’s also a lot of genuine love between us too. We’ve had the privilege of watching each other grow up, and take quiet pride in seeing one another slowly managing to get to where we want to be. I hope we never stop meeting and drinking and laughing, and I hope the stories never stop – yes, even the one about my ill-advised fuchsia pink pedal pusher phase – because they remind us of just how far we’ve come.

And if perhaps one of them would be so kind as to remind me of the above mentioned, nine cocktails/solo dancing story in time for my 30th birthday next year I’d really appreciate it. With my low capacity for alcohol these days, I’m more likely to pass out on the stage than dance on it, and I’m sure that, if that does happen, this lot are never going to let me hear the end of it.

Adulthood: Where did all my energy go?

31/08/2014 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

Our kitchen is being refurbished tomorrow.

And, in preparation, we have had to spread its entire contents around our very small flat. The plates and glasses now live in the bath, the dining chairs and table are on the sofa, and the iron stands right in front of the television, taunting me when I try to relax.

I want this work to be done. I requested it and I’ll even pay for it in a few months’ time (thank you interest free credit), but it doesn’t stop me dreading getting home from work tomorrow to remember that the fridge is out of action and that the dishwasher – my dearest friend – has been unplugged until further notice.

I haven’t even had to put in that much effort. Although I came up with all the ideas – wooden worktops, an easy-wash floor and a cupboard specifically dedicated to housing Cadbury’s products – I don’t have much to offer on the physical front. I was in charge of moving the wine glasses into the bath (a location I might stick with post-refurb) and putting all the food that went out of date in 2012 in the bin. That’s it. But I am still shattered. Not so much from the tasks themselves (although I did have to throw an inexplicably high volume of ‘vintage’ flour in the bin *sneezes*), but from the chaos that now surrounds me and the promise of more to come.

This is what being an adult feels like: desperation to make things better and then exhaustion at the thought of the effort involved. I don’t know where all our energy goes. Perhaps we grow out of it.

Take yesterday. I wanted to buy new jeans. If you’ve ever been shopping for denim you will know that no activity on earth will bring a grown adult closer to tears. In fact, purchasing jeans would be an ideal punishment for somebody who has done something terrible – like saying ‘pacific’ instead of ‘specific’ or talking during Coronation Street. It is the single most frustrating and exhausting type of shopping and I just can’t do it anymore. My new strategy is to order a gazillion pairs online in the hope that one of the bastards fits, and then sending the rest back. Though how I’m going to muster the energy to try them all on, I do not know.

But for every tiring endeavour comes a silver lining. With a refurbished kitchen comes a week of eating takeaway and with an online shopping order comes post, and who doesn’t love post?

In just a week’s time I will have a brand new kitchen, cupboard space big enough to hold a year’s supply of chocolate, and a need to find something new to complain about.

And I reckon that ‘thing’ will be that I can’t fasten my new jeans. A week eating prawn crackers and egg fried rice for tea is bound to take its toll on my waistline. I’ll probably have to jump up and down just to get them over my hips and, to be honest, that’s more effort than I’m willing to put in.

Four things you should not do in hot weather

27/07/2014 by Charlotte 2 Comments

It’s hot out there. Even hotter when you have a laptop resting on your legs, as I’m currently discovering.

And though summer lifts our spirits, sends our consumption of cucumber filled drinks through the roof, and gives our feet a well-earned break from their usual woolly prisons, there are some aspects of life that are a little trickier during a heatwave.

This doesn’t mean summer is a bad thing – it is, in fact, the best thing since spring – we just need to adjust ourselves to cope with the sudden presence of a burning ball of fire in the sky.

And whilst magazines tell us what we should do in the heat – wear sun cream, buy a hat, consume our five-a-day (one Mars ice cream, two Soleros, and two Mini Milks), they don’t tend to tell us what we shouldn’t do. So I am here to do just that – here are four things I recommend you avoid doing on a hot day:

1. Sit down for any length of time
I’d forgotten how much a human being can sweat from the leg: a lot. And the problem with sitting down – the main activity a person wants to do to avoid passing out from heat exhaustion – is that it gives your legs the opportunity to really get cooking. It’s a well-known fact that there are places on the human body from which one is expected to sweat. I’m not saying I like it; I don’t have a photograph of a damp armpit as my screen saver; it’s just that everybody knows that it happens and generally has the manners to ignore it. But if you stand up to reveal that the backs of your legs have suddenly turned into Niagara Falls, that is going to come as something of a surprise to nearby citizens. So I recommend that you keep moving. Or if you do have to sit down for a long period, you may wish to adopt my extremely attractive tactic of rearranging whichever piece of clothing you’ve chosen to wear that day so that any such perspiration is absorbed by your chair. Form an orderly queue, boys!

2. Attempt physical contact
I tried to hold my husband’s hand last night on the way back from a restaurant. The last time he looked at me like that – like perhaps I didn’t know how life works – was when I managed to hit him on the head with a stone I was attempted to skim, even though he was standing behind me. Of course he didn’t want to hold my hand; it was all he could do to get through the walk home without melting. Advertising would have us believe that summer is such a sexy time of year – I’ll prance about in a bikini before my other half carries me across the beach on his back and then hilariously pretends to hurl me into the sea. This is not reality. What couples actually do in hot weather is go on strike from all physical contact. There is no prancing, more dragging of our hot, swollen feet. There are no piggybacks, just one person walking ahead of the other saying “I JUST WANT TO GET HOME AND INTO THE SHOWER!” and there are no amusing attempts to throw me into open water (though if I try to grab my husband’s hand again, that may change). It’s every man and woman for themselves in this weather. We’ll put our wedding rings back on in the autumn.

3. Straighten your hair
Let me ask you a question – do you feel like doing ironing right now? No? And, how about ironing your hair? Of course not. This is not the time to be subjecting your boiling brain to hot metal plates. And even if you did, and you managed to survive the experience without drowning in a pool of your own salty tears, if your hair is anything like mine, it’ll either just stick to the sides of your head (making me look like Peter Andre in the Mysterious Girl video) or it’ll expand to the size of a small bush. It’s just not worth the effort.

4. Wear make-up
The other day I left the house wearing a full face of make-up. Two hours later I went to the bathroom to discover that said make-up had travelled so far from where I had originally put it that it looked like somebody had taken a damp flannel to my cheeks. And to make it even better, I’d had at least two face to face conversations during that time with people who, unless temporarily blinded by the perspiration shine on my forehead, will definitely have noticed. Thanks for letting me know, guys! So I won’t be doing that again. These cheeks are staying bare until the weather drops a few degrees (that’s my facial cheeks, before you panic. It’ll never be that hot).

*mops brow* So there you have it. If you keep your hands to yourself, your foundation in its bottle, your hair in a ponytail and your legs-a-moving, you’ll survive the heatwave no problem.

Oh and one more thing – if the last two hours has taught me anything it’s that if you must use a laptop on a hot day, make sure you put it on a table. My knees are now so warm that I don’t think even an ice cream could cool me down. Though I will, of course, give it a try.

Exercise is good for you, laziness is not…unfortunately

12/01/2014 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

Don’t you hate it when somebody who has been a member of a gym for all of, like, a week suddenly starts telling you about the virtues of exercise? Urgh, those people are so annoying.

In other news, I joined a gym this week and MY WORD do I feel good for it. I mean, sure, my thighs hurt so much on Friday afternoon that I feared I may never bend again, and my legs move in such a peculiar way when I’m on the cross trainer that I look like Kermit the Frog, but my heart hasn’t beaten this fast since Peter Andre released Mysterious Girl, so I can only assume I’m doing myself some good.

I’m the type of gym-goer that long term members hate, and here’s why:

1. I joined in January. This means that whilst I am full of good intentions now, they are very likely to have departed by the time the clocks go forward.

2. One of my favourite things about going to the gym is that it’s an excuse to go shopping. I purchased a pair of running-trousery-things (a technical term only us sporty types understand) on the sole basis that they have a luminous pink stripe on them. I had to buy new trainers because, unless I take-up basketball, my Converse ones are not really going to cut it (though, as you can see, they would match my new running trousers perfectly).

3. I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. I have to ask for help before I use any piece of machinery, including the changing room lockers.

4. I cough and splutter whilst swimming, which is extremely distracting for other people in the pool.

5. I smile at other people in the gym. You’re not supposed to smile in the gym.

But a girl’s got to start somewhere.

I realised at the end of last year that as much as I enjoy eating lard and staying completely still for days at a time, I have to start doing some exercise. The sofa will feel all the softer and the Cadbury’s Boosts will taste all the sweeter if I have actually bothered to move at some point during the day.

I’ve taken baby steps to ease myself in; I started off in the pool where I know exactly what I’m doing (spluttering my way up and down until my arms feel like they’re going to come off) and then slowly but surely into the actual gym bit where all the scary bikes, treadmills and weights live.

One thing I’m delighted to discover is that – despite my excellently coordinated attire – absolutely nobody looks at me at all. I had feared that my trips to the gym would simply provide free physical comedy for all the other members to watch. I imagined one lifting a toned hand from their exercise bike to point at me whilst I floundered on the cross trainer, whilst the other switched the video camera they’d attached to their sweatband on to score £250 from You’ve Been Framed when I inevitably fell off into a pool of my own sweat. But it’s not like that at all. And I haven’t fallen off anything…yet. *touches every piece of wood in the house*

As is usually the case, the only person who gives a damn what I look like is me, and even I’m losing interest. Now that I’m actually going with a view to getting fit, rather than just because they have hair straighteners in the changing room, looking bad is the least of my worries; I’m just trying to survive without perspiring my way into hospital.

And though it’s very early days, I do feel better for it, partly because of the exercise I’m doing, and partly because I no longer feel guilty for spending my entire life sitting down. This is progress my friends, so let’s see how long it lasts.

And, don’t worry, I’m not going to try and tell you to do the same thing. Chances are you already do exercise regularly like a good human being and despise people like me who only take it up because it’s January. Or otherwise you dodge it altogether in favour of the settee and a box set, in which case, I’ll see you in the spring.

Women’s magazines: Which ones are aimed at me?

05/01/2014 by Charlotte 1 Comment

My relationship with magazines started with Shout. Remember Shout? Ah, it was great.

I would attach every set of stickers that came with it to my bedroom door (much to my mum’s horror) and stare at PJ and Duncan, Paul Nicholls and Boyzone each night as I drifted off to sleep. Then came the wonderful Smash Hits and a weekly instalment of lyrics for me to use to sing along to the Spice Girls and Peter Andre like the totally cool dude that I was back then.

Then I moved on to Sugar and Bliss and learnt that – hey guess what – other girls get bad skin/knotty hair/inexplicably angry once a month, and that we were all agreed that farting – or ‘parping’ as they called it – in front of another human being was definitely the single worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody EVER.

But then I became a grown up. And with more and more mags to choose from these days, it’s hard to know exactly which ones are aimed at me. What publication should a 28-year-old married woman who thinks the fact that she still wears Converse trainers means she’s right on trend and that Coronation Street is cutting edge television be reading, I wonder?

So, in the interests of research, yesterday I ventured out and bought five magazines to help me find the answer: Grazia, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Red and Glamour.

There’s something so wonderfully indulgent about buying lots of glossies at once, like all I’m going to do for the rest of the day is sip hot chocolate and glide through the pages in front of a roaring fire. Sadly I don’t have a fire, only radiators, and if I am drinking hot chocolate, I tend to neck it whilst throwing a large marshmallow down with every gulp, so my consumption of these reading materials was less glamorous than you might think but I still had a very nice time.

And whilst I was reading them I noticed five things:

1. Grown-up magazines don’t come with packs of free stickers (more’s the pity).
2. I now enjoy looking at clothes in magazines more than I do in shops. I can sit down whilst I’m doing it, eat a chocolate bar at the same time, and fool myself into thinking that I still have a size 8 waist (though the size of the chocolate bar I eat tends to make that illusion rather short lived);
3. People are still talking about twerking (and I’m definitely still too old to try it);
4. Magazines will never run out of things to write about sex;
5. Reading this many glossies at once could prove to be a very expensive habit.

And I loved it. I stared at shoes I can’t afford, I read an article about the importance of empathy that I enjoyed, I noted that ankle boots and boyfriend jeans are now considered to be a perfect match and quietly disagreed, and I read a review of The Wolf of Wall Street that made me want to see it even more than I already did (I’ve carried my crush on Leonardo DiCaprio with me into my adult years. If anything it’s just intensified with age.) I might do this every Saturday.

And I realised that there is thankfully still plenty out there for me. OK the fashion has changed a little bit (although I notice crop-tops still haven’t disappeared back to the nineties where they belong), the celebrities I read about are new (what ever happened to Shampoo?) and Sugar never suggested I consider quitting my job and setting up my own business (school was kind of a non-negotiable commitment), but my reasons for enjoying them are still the same – for a little light relief, a quick fix of celebrity, and to maybe even learn a thing or two. It’s just a shame they don’t include song lyrics any more so I guess I’ll have to google them like everybody else.

As to which magazines are aimed at me, I guess the good news is that the answer is all of them; there was something in every single one that I enjoyed. Granted there were also a few bits that were of less interest – with a chocolate habit like mine, features about diets and exercise regimes are never going to be my thing, and there’s only so many ‘sex secrets’ articles one woman can read in a lifetime – but a quick turn of the page and I was back onto something more up my street.

My only disappointment was that none of them included any pictures of Boyzone for me to put up so I suppose I’ll just have to find my own. My bedroom door’s looking awfully bare.

15 post wedding resolutions I have already broken

24/11/2013 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

1. Don’t use the fact that I wrote every single one of our wedding gift thank you cards against him.

2. When he says he’ll fill the dishwasher, let him. Don’t just do it myself because I don’t believe he’ll load it correctly.

3. Refrain from mentioning that all I can think about is getting home and putting on my pyjamas whilst out on date nights.

4. No longer bring up his domestic failings late at night when he is trying to go to sleep.

5. Stop mentioning that he lost my phone charger. And that sharing one between us is annoying. And that the fact that I could easily just stop being a baby and go out and buy a new one is NOT. THE. POINT.

6. Stay awake until at least 10.30pm on a Saturday evening.

7. No longer use sighing as a method of communication.

8. Don’t be offended because he’d rather play FIFA 14 than look through the wedding photographs.

9. Don’t threaten annulment just because he refuses to listen to Magic FM during dinner.

10. Spend evenings having conversations instead of just watching Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You reruns and falling asleep.

11. Avoid using sarcasm to express annoyance that the laundry basket is overflowing e.g. “You know what I love? Having a pile of laundry that is exactly the same height as me. It’s like living with ART.”

12. At least pretend to be open to the idea of leaving the house on a Sunday.

13. Don’t use my new status as his wife as an excuse to bin all his boxer shorts that I don’t like.

14. Or let a blog post be the way that he finds out that I’ve done it.

15. Be a nicer person.

How to take a man shopping

27/10/2013 by Charlotte Leave a Comment

Persuading a man to spend his weekend picking out new togs for himself is a tricky business. Not for the faint hearted. But in the interests of keeping him warm, and avoiding having a wardrobe that looks like an Oliver Twist production costume rack, you’re going to have to hit the shops. So here’s my seven point guide to taking your gentleman to the high street. I recommend having a good sleep the night before.

1. Give him time to prepare
Whereas waking up on a Saturday morning to the suggestion of an impromptu shopping trip may be the greatest thing that could happen to you, he may look upon it in the same way as you would tickets to an all-day X-Box tournament. Angrily. So it’s best to plant the retail seed early – perhaps one to two weeks in advance – so that he has time to resign himself to his fate.

2. Keep his spirits up
For this trip to be worth your while you’re going to need to be the retail equivalent of Mr Motivator. Constant praise, reminders of how much you’ve achieved so far, and willingness to sport borderline obscene Lycra throughout are all the keys to your success. (Ok, perhaps not the last one but it will make it easier to run back and forth between changing rooms.)

3. Be prepared to be a personal shopper
You’ve spent the last fortnight telling him that you don’t want to be married to a man that doesn’t own a single pair of matching socks and that the jeans he wears with a hole in the crotch are going to get him arrested, and that if he’ll just agree to come shopping, you will help him choose AMAZING new things that will change his life. So now you’ve got to prove it. It’s no use leaving him to wander the shop floor, staring confusedly at something he’ll later learn is a snood; you’ve got to make yourself useful, choose him things, listen when he says he likes something and then find it in every colour. I suggest you wear comfortable shoes; you’re going to be on your feet for some time.

4. Incorporate regular snack stops
The only way you’re going to manage to make a day of it (and survive yourself without passing out) is through the inclusion of regular breaks. And, just as with a toddler or a puppy, food can also be used a reward “Just try on one more t-shirt on for me and then we can go and have a biscuit, ok?”

(For those readers who found this section too patronising to bear, I feel it’s important at this point to remind you that this is a parody. Though, coincidentally, this method does also actually work surprisingly well.)

5. Find a shop he likes and don’t leave until you’ve bought everything in it
Persuading him to go shopping is one thing; getting him to actually buy something is another. In my experience, (which I’ll admit is limited to just the one man so feel free to take this with as little salt as you wish) getting a gent to commit to an item of clothing is very difficult. And particularly so when his wardrobe comes with the following rules:
– No bold colours
– No blue jeans
– No neck lines that make him “look like a knobhead”
He would rather wear the same clothes forever than risk looking a fool (a risk I am personally too happy to take in the interests of spending some cash). After many years and one traumatic trip to Oxford Street, during which he claimed he was leaving not just London but the country if I ever suggested we went there again, we have managed to find a total of four shops he likes. So a couple of times a year, I take him there, order everything in a medium, and get it trucked home.

6. Take no excuses
When you’re both starting to get tired and the lure of the sofa and Cadbury’s Twirl four-pack at home is getting too strong, he’ll start looking for any excuse not to go into a shop. The fact that they’re playing the Black Eyed Peas, that the coat hangers are a bit lurid or that the shop assistant has unkempt sideburns cannot be accepted as valid reasons to walk away.

7. Know when it’s time to go home
Having said that, if you’re not careful, your military approach to this shopping expedition could quickly turn from ‘caring and cute’ to ‘irritating and divorce-inducing’ if overdone. As much as it’s important to get everything you can out of this day because, let’s face it, it won’t happen again until the clocks go forward, it’s more important to leave with your relationship intact and without becoming one of those couples who has a screaming row on the tube because someone didn’t take the pyjamas you lovingly picked out for him seriously. Don’t be those guys; go home, have a shower. That Lycra will be in need of a wash.

Four things I will not miss about being single

01/09/2013 by Charlotte 4 Comments

With just six sleeps and five episodes of Coronation Street standing between me marriage, I thought now was the time to bid a formal adieu to my single days with a countdown of the top four things I will miss the least about being Miss Reeve…

1. Texting
Will he reply? Won’t he reply? Did he realise that the comment I made about the level of time I spend in my pyjamas was definitely a joke and not evidence that I have mental health problems? Does he think my use of emoticons is excessive? Should I take his lacks of kisses as a sign that he despises me? Does the inclusion of two kisses mean he’s totally interested? Was that text message really meant for me? Am I leaving big enough gaps between my replies? If I use ellipses is he automatically going to assume that I’m up for it? What does ‘What are you up to?’ even mean? How specific should I be? ‘Just rustling up a pasta, sauce and cheese dinner’ seems a bit dull but that is literally what I’m up to…

Marrying a man who only ever sends me texts to ask if we need anything from the supermarket or if he’s free on an upcoming Saturday as he’d really like to go and watch some very dull-sounding rugby, will make the whole texting business a much simpler affair.

2. Ballads
Sinead O’Connor, The Honeyz, Lionel Richie, Celine Dion, nineties boy band album tracks… they were all the soundtrack to years of sobbing into a pillow whenever the proverbial love train was taken out of service:

“Hello? Is it me you’re looking for? WHY NOT I’M EXCELLENT AT CONVERSATION!”

“I know what the Backstreet Boys mean, I want it that way too! TELL ME WHY!”

“Please! [enter name of boy/man who decided his life would be less irritating without me] THINK TWICE, FOR THE SAKE OF OUR LOVE, FOR THE MEMORIES!”

“I go out every night and sleep all day, since you took your love away (although to be fair I am a student so I’d probably have been doing that anyway).”

Now I can just listen to these songs as they were supposed to be listened to: whilst dusting the coffee table of a Sunday morning and marvelling at my ability to hold the final TWIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE in Think Twice all the way through (with only three short breathing breaks).

3. Fashion faux pas
I’m not going to get married and then instantly stop shaving my legs, washing my face or changing my underwear (we’ve already been together eight years so that all stopped ages ago, right ladies?! HEY-O) but I am going to enjoy chilling-the-chuff-out about my wardrobe choices.

I spent years with my stomach in knots as I realised that of course all the other girls knew that this was clearly a tops and jeans event when I had decided to wear a psychedelic nylon dress, or that obviously fancy dress is an opportunity for girls to attempt to look sexy and not just wear pyjamas and claim to be the boy from The Snowman.

Surely once I’m married I can just wear what I want, where I want. And by what I mean my dressing gown and by where I mean EVERYWHERE.

4. Base chat
Nobody ever forgets being called the dreaded F word (which in this case is frigid, although fat, frumpy and freakishly tall are also rather nasty ones), especially when it’s said by a person so unappealing that the world would be better off just coming to an end than using him to repopulate the earth. And so it comes as something of a relief to get married and move into the category of people whose love lives NOBODY wants to hear about.

As I have written before, there is nothing more awful or disgusting than the thought of people who are in a relationship – let alone married – partaking in bedroom-based activities. It is wrong and weird and enough to make a person vomit up their Monster Munch. I can do it or I cannot do it (or I can wait ’til all the housework is done to my satisfaction before even thinking about doing it like any normal person) and nobody need ever know.

Well, what a lovely note to end on! Blog fans, please note that I am taking a month off writing silly words for the purposes of having a wedding, a honeymoon and at least 30 days of marriage where I don’t publicly mock my new husband for still being unable to switch the bathroom light off…

See you in October!

Tiredness: Why I never make it through a whole film

18/08/2013 by Charlotte 1 Comment

7am: Get up. Go downstairs. Turn off dishwasher, bathroom light and X-box that Leon left on last night. Throw yesterday evening’s chocolate crumbs in bin.

7.10am: Shower. Exfoliate anything and everything with vigour. Wash hair. Spend 10 minutes with each ear under shower to rinse out conditioner.

7.20am: Apply body lotion, facial wash, moisturiser, SPF, eye cream and mound of mascara. Rub at bits of mascara that escape in brow, eyelid and, inexplicably, forehead. Roll on deodorant and flap arms. Open wardrobe and stair into abyss.

7.30am: Sigh. Put on clothing selection. Look in mirror. Sigh again. Head downstairs.

7.35am: Make breakfast whilst also making lunch, emptying dishwasher and taking out recycling. Ignore what number of Pringles packets says about diet.

7.45am: Clean teeth whilst making bed.

7.48am: Wipe dripped toothpaste off duvet/clothes/carpet/fiancé.

7.49am: Gurgle with Listerine. Consider putting in eyes to make self feel more awake. Decide against.

7.50am: Apply make-up at speed. Hope ‘slapped’ look will die down. Do needless tidying that could definitely wait ’til later. Look at time. Gasp. Grab handbag.

8am: Run downstairs. Unplug iron, regardless of whether Leon has finished using it. Remind him for the 900th time to shut bathroom window and lock front door. Wish him a pleasant day and leave the house.

8.05am: Leg it to tube station. Curse self that what could be a nice leisurely walk always turns into panicked sweaty half run.

8.20am: Take deep breath, tense muscles and get on tube. Open newspaper. Pretend to be invisible.

8.50am: Push through carriage full of angry people. Get off tube. Tweet most irritating occurrence.

9am – 5.30pm: WORK.

Whilst working also think: What shall we have for dinner? Did I leave my straighteners on? Are there enough tops in the laundry to justify a colours wash? Whose birthday is it next? When was the last time we changed our electric toothbrush heads? Will he have remembered to shut the bathroom window?

5.30pm: Travel home. Work out if have enough food in fridge to avoid going to supermarket.

6.15pm: Arrive at supermarket. Resist temptation to punch self-service screen and shout “I’LL GIVE YOU AN UNEXPECTED ITEM IN YOUR BAGGING AREA IF YOU DON’T PLAY BALL!”

6.45pm: Get home. Remember immediately who left house last at sight of erect ironing board and shadow of the GODDAMN bathroom light.

6.50pm: Go upstairs. Change into comfortable ‘house clothes’. Look in mirror and promise to throw said ‘house trousers’ (old old old jogging trousers that have never experienced jogging – unless running to the sweets cupboard in the X-Factor advert break counts) away very soon.

7pm: Ring Leon’s mobile. Get no answer. Ring work mobile. Get no answer. Ring work landline. Get no answer. Assume he’s gone to gym/is listening to iPod/enjoying half an hour’s peace before returning to alleged domestic bliss.

7.05pm: Eat bowl of crisps.

7.08pm: Regret eating bowl of crisps.

7.10pm: Start cooking. Whilst cooking, put on load of washing, hang up clothes still in machine from last night, wipe table, open post, arrange post into ‘for shredding’, ‘for filing’ and ‘for some joker who hasn’t lived here for years but just can’t be arsed to change their address’, and shake out toaster.

7.30pm: Put Coronation Street on. Or if it’s not Monday, Wednesday or Friday put Eastenders on and wish that it was.

7.45pm: Grate cheese. (I don’t know what I’m cooking in this scenario but it’s fair to assume cheese will be involved.)

7.50pm: Eat large handful of cheese and have to grate more.

8pm: Welcome Leon home from gym. Tell him not to sit anywhere or touch anything until he’s had a shower. Make witty comment about benefits of switching off electrical appliances before leaving for work, which he ignores.

8.15pm: Eat dinner. Share every detail of day, including BOGOF deal I managed to score on favourite tomato and red pepper relish.

9pm: Stand next to him as he loads dishwasher and point out what he’s doing wrong. Agree to retire to lounge when told to keep beak out. Watch secretly from sofa.

9.05pm: When joined in lounge, say with confidence I definitely can stay awake through a film if he puts one on.

9.10pm: Put sofa blanket over me and rest eyes while he chooses a DVD and turns off all lights (proving he does know where the switch is).

11.30pm: Wake up during credits.