30 Going on 18

Last June I spoke to my friend F a couple of days after her 31^st birthday. I originally rang to wish her belated happy returns, sure she would have done something incredibly glamorous to mark the occasion.

“What did you do to celebrate?” I asked.

“Well”, she said “We went to (insert name of cool bar) and then I drank too much by accident and I was sick on the pavement outside.”

I began to laugh, and still chuckle every time I remember this conversation. You see, what I found the most funny about this story is that the ending to F's 31^st birthday is probably very similar to the ending to her 21^st. And her 18^th. And her 15^th. Come to think of it, the steps of the Midland bank (as it was then) in my home town still bear the traces of the Ouzo that F

upchucked after the special birthday “mixture” I'd kindly made for her from my parents' booze cupboard made a reappearance. The conversation made

me ponder on whether we have actually changed at all over the past fifteen years. One would hope so. Here we are, both with “respectable jobs” and adult lives, paying rent (in F's case) and a mortgage (in mine). And as F pointed out the other day, we even have nails! Proper long ones, with polish on! In fact I even got a manicure yesterday. And as I mentioned in one of my first posts, I can (nearly) walk in heels now!

Yesterday I got ID'ed whilst buying wine in Tesco's. It happened last week as well. Incredibly flattering it may be, but it's also kind of annoying. I want to shout “ I'm grown up, look! I'm going to go home and consume this 5.99 bottle of red responsibly with a nice dinner, not drink it behind the bandstand in the park (although I do still enjoy a can of sweet cider, especially in hot weather!) But after drinking at least half a bottle, I'm still going to giggle uncontrollably, talk loudly about sex and generally act in an immature, indiscreet manner, much in the same way as I would have done at fifteen. Nice.

There are some things I still do that mark me out as a teenager trapped in a woman's body. For your perusal, I have listed a few below:

1. I find farts or mention of any other bodily function incredibly funny.
2. I can spend hours examining my face in the mirror and squeezing my blackheads
3. In my opinion, New Look is the way forward – especially for shoes.
4. I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of celebrity culture, gleaned from the pages of the kind of magazines that cost no more than 99p.
5. I would rather spend my hard earned cash on the above-mentioned trashy magazines and expensive cosmetics than on getting my car fixed. It's been tricky having a passenger door that doesn't open, but hey, I've managed!
6. When I feel ill, depressed, or just generally down, I call my Mum. I can always count on unconditional love and sympathy from her.
7. When I have a problem with my computer/car/central heating/ Tv or anything else technological or mechanical, I call my Dad. He's my solicitor/mechanic/ plumber and business adviser all rolled into one.
8. When I get excited, I say “Y'know” a lot at the end of sentences. Y'Know?
9. My friends and I swap clothes on a regular basis. My friends J and A regard my wardrobe as theirs and vice versa. It's like having three times as many clothes! They also have free rein on my make up bag and shoes.
   
   
10. When thinking about my future, I often start sentences with the words “When I grow up....”

I could probably go on for pages here, but you get the picture...

Recently though, I have begun to morph into this weird half and half being, a sulky teenager with grey hair, a young person with strangely right wing values. For example, I do like to listen to Radio 4 occasionally. Desert Island Discs is extremely informative. I also like to watch the News every day – when did I become interested in current affairs? Ditto University Challenge – and I got six questions right last week – get in! I find it scandalous to leave the house with chipped nail polish and I now carry sensible 'just in case' items in my bag – emergency healthy snacks, an umbrella and olbas oil scented tissues. Again, when did that happen?

And gardening. That's another middle aged hobby that I've started to take an interest in. I now looooove garden centres. I remember when a visit to Percy Thrower's was grounds for a full on teenage strop. Nowadays, I can happily browse bedding plants and hose fittings for hours and I do actually grow things - I ate the first squash from my garden for my tea last night! How frightfully civilized darling.....

However, the biggest indicator of change for me is that whenever I stay with F in London and we go salsa dancing, we now get the last tube home. In the good old days (two years ago) we'd drink our own body weight in cocktails, and stagger to the night bus after being escorted to the kebab shop by a couple of nice young men we'd have met that night. We'd pretend to take their numbers and then brave the wind and rain at the bus stop, stuffing our faces with whatever undesirable carb based offering we'd managed to find. We'd giggle the two hour journey home back to North London, dissecting the night and the men we'd met in minute detail, only pausing for breath to get off at the (wrong) stop. In fact, I distinctly remember limping home one summer morning at 5 am as the birds were singing, salsa rhythms still pounding in my head. Nowadays, however, we leave at 11.45 and we're home by 1. It's all very civilized, and it means you don't feel as ill the next day. Also you don't wake up with chilli sauce stains around your mouth, which as far as I'm concerned is a bonus.

Anyway, I need to stop because Gardener's Question Time is on in a minute. But I'll be catching up on my celebrity gossip at the same time. I've got this week's copy of Star magazine that hasn't been opened yet and I'm absolutely dying to read about how Jordan and Alex are about to get a divorce. Then I'm off to get drunk at the park.

Next!

Next!

In secondary school, there was a boy in my class who I was friends with. I liked him a lot and he really fancied me. I promised him that we would get together in 2000 if neither of us had a steady partner. It seemed to me like ages away.

It was 2004 and I met him in the pub in my home town where I was spending that summer. He walked straight over to me and reminded me of my promise. I was going through a dry spell at the time and he had turned into a man – no longer the spotty farmer's son obsessed with tractors but a blonde surfer looking type with a body just the right side of skinny and bright blue eyes. He had turned his love for HGVs into a successful career in long distance haulage and split his time between Europe and our home town. I needed a distraction that summer, just having split with a long term boyfriend. And so, we went on a date.

It was fantastic. We were snogging outside the pub when my Mum arrived to give me a lift home. (Flashback to 1993 – third year school disco) For a few weeks we re-discovered our friendship and more stuff that we never would have thought of doing in school. And then suddenly, I began to feel him slipping away from me.

At first, it was just indiscernible signs that he was no longer as interested. People told me that he had been in the pub where I worked but on my night off, chatting to another girl who worked there (I had introduced them). I began to see small sparks of attraction between them out of the corner of my eye, in my peripheral vision. I knew what was happening. But instead of confronting him about it, I went out with my sister, drank twelve vodka and cokes and got off with another good looking guy who had a steady girlfriend. In a strange way that was my revenge on the girl that I had been compared against. Totally irrational.

A few days later, the inevitable happened. He guiltily told me that it wasn't working out. I knew at that moment that everything depended on my reaction, and keeping my pride intact was the best thing I could do at that time. It felt like he had skewered me through the stomach and as we watched my guts dripping onto the stone flagging beneath our feet he stumbled and stuttered and made silly excuses that I really could have done without. I turned to him with a bright smile and told him that it was fine, I thought it was just a bit of fun and anyway, I was moving down south the next month to start my PGCE. Then I went home and stared at the wall for a really long time.

So, anyway, without knowing it, I was doing The Rules – pretending that it didn't matter, that he didn't matter. Knowing that matching his indifference was crucial at that point.

Recently I've been thinking about that moment again – as it looks like the hot Facebook guy who I've mentioned in previous blogs has run for the hills and won't be coming back. I don't know why. All I know is that there has been no contact for a week. My friends seem to think that he's just sorting himself out, he's getting out of this long relationship and needs time. Personally I think he's just taking time to get himself out of the situation he got himself into with me. So it's NEXT! And I'll say it again and again until I can't say it any more.

I'll plaster that bright smile on my face to cover the disappointment and cover myself with the single lady's armour – red lipstick and heels. I'll reconstruct that brittle exterior, that independent 'don't fuck with me' attitude that I've worked so hard to cultivate. I'm off to spend a week with F in the big city and I know that after a couple of nights out dancing, long lunches with plenty of wine and a few days of long, heartfelt analysis of why men are so rubbish (and why they leave wet towels on the floor) I'll be fine. In a few days I'll be back to my old bouncy self.

I recently found out that my childhood friend with whom I had that brief fling married the girl that he dumped me for and they have two kids. I don't quite know how I feel about that. Maybe they were meant for each other all along and I was just a brief distraction in their meant-to-be togetherness. If so then I'm glad I helped them find each other. Really I am.

An Army Boots Situation

An Army Boots Situation

My friend F is gorgeous. Absolutely stunning. When I'm with her, I jokingly refer to myself as the 'fat friend'. But strangely enough, she's constantly worried about the way she looks. It just goes to show that self confidence is not related to actual appearance, but a host of other messy issues of the kind that require hours in a psychiatrist's chair, lots of tissues and finally, a really big bill.

I distinctly remember an occurrence when we were eleven or twelve which perfectly epitomizes extreme teenage angst and our preoccupation with self image. Doc Marten's were in fashion and everybody in our group of friends had a pair. Mine were light brown 10 holers with yellow laces (come to think of it, I should have kept them because they're now back in fashion). Unfortunately, F didn't have a pair because with her feet being a size 8, the local shop didn't have any in stock big enough. Instead, her Mum had insisted on buying her a pair of boots from the local army and navy store as a kind of consolation prize, insisting they were 'exactly the same'.

We were getting ready to go to the school disco when it happened. I was already dressed (stripy tights, denim hot pants, body suit, velvet waistcoat, floppy hat, deathly pale foundation and Rimmel heather shimmer lippy as the finishing touch with a quick spray of Impulse – classy!) and F realised that she couldn't wear the army boots, because, well, they were hideous. And by hideous I mean proper ugly - full on army boots with steel toecaps and an interestingly textured shiny type leather. Neither did they go with anything in F's wardrobe – not even her crushed velvet tassled hippy skirt with the little mirrors on which she had planned to wear that evening (girls reading this who grew up in the nineties, I know that you had one as well!) In short, they were horrendous and nothing like Doc Marten's at all.

Well, she cried. With huge sobbing gulps, lying on the floor on top of all the discarded items that she couldn't wear. Her parents remonstrated with her, saying that the boots looked fine and she was just being silly. But she knew they didn't look fine. And so did I. And, even at the age of twelve, I knew with startling clarity that the situation was devastating for her. It wasn't just about the boots. It was about fitting in, being accepted and feeling great on that particular night. The second form school discos was the event on our social calendar and she absolutely had to bag the last dance to Bryan Adams with a certain hot boy who had been eyeing her up on the school bus.

I can't even remember what she wore. I do remember that we hatched a plan later on which involved either burying or burning the boots. Sitting on the floor at the end of the bed where we lay that night after the disco, they looked like some huge fat black insect, a manifestation of every teenage girl's worst fears. That fear of being different, of being a social outcast.

Nowadays, F can look back at that evening and laugh. It has even become our catch phrase, as in ' I think I'm going to have an Army Boots Situation, I've got nothing to wear...' Haven't we all had an Army Boots Situation at some time or another? That awful sinking feeling that your clothes are all rubbish and you can't leave the house because you're so hideous?

I still have it from time to time, although I can deal with it better now I'm in my thirties. For me, the realisation that I have nothing to wear and the ensuing frenzy of pulling every item of clothing out of my wardrobe and collapsing in a heap on the floor is closely followed by a rational return to sanity. I realise that I have to pick myself up off the bedroom floor, pour a large white wine and get on with it (Girls Aloud optional at this point)

And I always find that if I'm having a crap day that a thick application of Rimmel's Heather Shimmer perks me up no end ….

The 'Undo' Button

The Undo Button

I have a colleague who, every time I'm in the staff room, seems to be having problems with the computer. The F word quite often figures quite heavily in our conversation as he's usually desperately trying to finish a work sheet or print something out five minutes before the lesson is about to start. In the past two weeks, I have actually been able to help him on two occasions, which for a technological dunce like me is amazing. I suppose it's always good to know that there is someone out there less skilled than oneself.

Last week, I introduced him to the joys of the 'Undo' button. He loved the fact that you can hit it at any time and delete whatever mess you happen to have made. Then I started thinking – wouldn't it be great if there was an Undo button in real life? At a mouse click you could take back every disastrous action and every word, and wipe yourself as clean as a New Document. You could also try out a variety of scenarios, and if you didn't like the outcome, undo them immediately.

I clearly remember a conversation that I had a couple of years ago with my friend M. She told me that there are only two things in her life that she has ever been truly certain about. 1. That getting married was the right thing to do and 2. That two children was enough. She is divorced and has three boys.

I have been thinking recently about what mistakes I wish I hadn't made, or things that I should have done differently. There were three biggies but 'Not getting married so quickly' would be top of my list. Getting engaged after knowing someone for only ten months was probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, even though at the time, I had that same certainty that M had when she got married. As it turned out there were a couple of deal breakers hidden in there which I knew nothing about – less attractive traits which my ex kept hidden from me until they resurfaced two years into our marriage. Maybe if we had waited, I would have found out about them and been able to make a more informed decision.

I also wish that I'd tried harder to be an actor instead of being too afraid of rejection. That regret stems from the bad university choice I made – I was stuck at Bristol writing essays on Futurism whilst my friends off my A Level course were being trained as actors. But at eighteen, what did I know about life or about what I really wanted? I knew Bristol was a good university and to be fair, having a degree from such a well respected institution has opened a few doors for me in my teaching career.

More recently, I wish that I could hit the undo button on last Saturday night. I allowed the hot guy that I have been writing about (him off FB chat) to reject me and then I hung around. Actually what I should have done was plastered a big smile on my face, said 'See you later' and jumped into a taxi. This was immediately after he had told me that he wasn't really interested. Instead, I put my arms around him and tried (a little bit and in a very sneaky way) to get him to change his mind. He did waver and we kissed a couple of times. But I woke up on Sunday morning seriously regretting that loss of self control. I had, for a couple of minutes, shown him how much I like him and had been totally open in the way that you can only be after a series of lethal cocktails. I put myself in a stupidly weak position.

In an attempt to re -dress the balance, I have been cool and calm at work and ignored a couple of cheeky emails that he sent. Seemed to work because he turned up in my room on Friday afternoon looking sheepish and we spent half an hour chatting. Inside, I kept telling myself that I needed to be calm, cool and collected (the Rules) although I desperately wanted to do things to him that were definitely not suitable for a work environment. I know that I need to wait for this guy to sort himself out and good things are always worth waiting for.

Writing this, it has just occurred to me that my regrets centre around making snap decisions – perhaps the moral of the story is for me to consider every option more carefully and not to be in so much of a rush all the time. Also I don't think I'll be drinking a mix of mojitos and martinis again any time soon. Cocktails make me drunk in a stupid way and from experience I know that a hangover combined with that ashamed feeling is the worst thing to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

I suppose now should be the cheesy bit where I comment on how I have learnt important lessons from all the mistakes I've made and the incredibly stupid things I've done. And at the risk of sounding trite, yes, I have learnt from my mistakes in both my personal and work life. But wouldn't it be great if we could try out a variety of scenarios and pick the best one?

How to Torture Yourself With Technology

How to Torture Yourself with Technology

Well. Facebook etiquette. According to my flatmate it doesn't exist. Unfortunately have fallen into the habit of FB chatting with a certain hot guy that I kind of like. Now, whenever I log on, I'm waiting for him to pop up...

This feeling of anticipation makes me feel like I'm back in secondary school, when passing scribbled love notes during History was the preferred way of communicating with someone that you fancied. My friends and I would spend hours afterwards decoding each note - every exclamation mark, the number of kisses and what colour ink he'd used. In those days, as unimaginable as it is now, a guy could call your landline and you wouldn't know he had called. Can you imagine that? It seems so quaint now, like something from the 1950s. You could always say to yourself 'Oh so and so might have called while I was out...' and a small window of hope would remain.

Over the summer, I went to Turkey on holiday and met a gorgeous guy there. On my return, after I had vowed to forget about him and get on with my (much less colourful) life in the UK, he started popping up on Facebook Chat. Once I had started to expect him to message me, it became a nightmare. The problem lies with the fact that you can see on Facebook when the person you like is online. And if he's online but has decided not to message you, then he's definitely not interested. After a couple of weeks, the Turkish guy's messages became less frequent. And after I had firmly told him that I wouldn't be flashing certain parts of my anatomy on Skype, his passion for me definitely cooled.

I wasn't keen on Skype anyway... it creates a difficult situation. Imagine the scenario...

It's a Monday night and after a hard day at work you're stretched on the sofa with a copy of Star magazine wearing a pair of trackies and a T-shirt that has hair dye all over it. You're wearing your glasses and no make up. Suddenly you realise the hot Turkish guy is skyping you... what do you do?

Well, what you do is, you accept the call and then run to the bathroom in a flap (stubbing your toe on the edge of the shower cubicle on the way) and try to apply mascara and foundation in five seconds whilst simultaneously slipping into a sexy (but not too try hard) top. Trackies can stay on. I can vouch for the fact that applying mascara whilst trying to change your clothes is really not a good idea. Red, watering eyes weren't exactly the look I was going for but at least he couldn't see my spots.

This went on for a couple of weeks and then, as I said above, he suddenly stopped calling and messaging me. So I deleted him from my Facebook friends list. It was way less painful for me that way – removing the possibility that he was going to call meant that I could browse without torturing myself that maybe he was going to get in touch.

I'm now toying with the idea of deleting this latest guy from my friends list. I just can't cope with the uncertainty of whether he's going to get in touch or not. I've fallen into the habit of checking Facebook as soon as I get in from work and then throughout the evening. It's really not healthy – I could be spending my time in much more worthwhile pursuits, like reading Glamour, doing pelvic floor exercises or examining my blackheads in the bathroom mirror.

However, technology can occasionally be used to make relationships less complicated. My new flatmate recently showed me an App alluringly called 'Grindr' which is just for gay men. It has photos of gay men who live in the area and also lists their vital measurements and how far away they are at that moment in time. Basically, a way of finding the nearest hot men and ascertaining whether they'd be up for some no strings attached action. Now why don't we have something like that for straight people? Or maybe we do and I just haven't found it yet....

The 'Eat, Pray, Love' Syndrome

The 'Eat, Pray, Love' Syndrome

I went to see 'Eat Pray Love' last week and came out of the cinema with a hollow feeling. Why? Because the ending made me feel awful. Julia Roberts spends a year 'finding herself' only to speed off into the sunset with Javier Bardem, finally happy because she has a Brazilian hottie to spend the rest of her days with. Is it only me that finds this odd? That ultimately she ends up being validated or 'made whole' by a relationship when that was what she was supposedly escaping in the first place?

Unfortunately, I did the same thing this weekend – made a man responsible for my happiness. Poor him – he had no idea that was going on. To make matters worse, he (the hot guy I mentioned last time) has just split up with his girlfriend and is totally confused. He doesn't know what he wants and certainly doesn't need a load of pressure off me. I spent all day yesterday in a fever of anticipation, hoping something would happen between us. And it kind of did – in a fully clothed kind of way. However I'm not optimistic that its going to go any further – apparently he needs time to sort his head out. Or maybe that's just man speak for 'No thanks, I don't fancy you and I wouldn't have sex with you if you were the last woman on the planet'. Today, I'm totally deflated (not to mention hungover,which doesn't help) and angry with myself for expecting so much. How can it be that my whole feeling of self worth can alter in less than twenty fours? Its ridiculous.

The Rules would say that 'he's just not that into me' and that I should move swiftly on. Therefore, I have resolved that when I see him at work, I will appear stable, happy, cool, calm, flirtatious and confident (on the outside) even though I'm disappointed, deflated and needy (on the inside). I'm going to deliver a performance worthy of an Oscar.

So. Anyway. Back to 'Eat Pray Love'. I'd love to mince around on a beach wearing a sari, with an endless parade of hot men to distract me and spend all day eating pizza without worrying about the carbs. But real life isn't like that. I need to man up (as my friend J says – excuse the pun!) and stop pinning all my happiness on a guy. I always do it and end up crushing them with my expectations.

Anyway, I'm off to read 'The Rules' again. I am calm, cool and confident...

Although, lets face it, Javier Bardem would definitely get it......

Pjs and heels (think it's going to catch on...!)

Come to think of it, I haven't explained why I have given the blog this title. Here is my rationale behind it....

It struck me the other day that I am slowly, gradually, becoming able to walk in heels. In my early twenties and teens I deliberately chose shoes with a platform heel because I knew that a) I couldn't bear the pain of a 5 inch heel and b) because I couldn't walk in them. Nowadays, though, I take teetering steps towards being a fully fledged wearer of bona fide sexy shoes. (Not for work though, only for going out)

Today, after school I bought a mediumly high pair of heels. Black suede with a delicate strap across the ankle. I can walk in them – in fact I cleaned the bathroom wearing them earlier this evening. I had to test them out, you see. Check that they were suitably slutty to wear on Saturday night.

Anyway, I digress... basically I feel that as I gain my independence as a single and independent woman (that's me trying to cultivate my much desired my inner poise) I am beginning to take small steps much the same as one does the first time one wears heels. Maybe one day I'll be ready to tackle the five inchers. That's when I 'll have that inner contentment.

Having uncomfortable shoes actually worked to my advantage the other night. Last Friday a group of us went out from work to celebrate a colleague's birthday. I ended up sitting next to a hot PE teacher. Had noticed him before at school but figured that he was waaaaayyy out of my league. We started chatting and ended up having one of those conversations where you suddenly look up and realize that the evening has passed and everyone else is putting on their coats and preparing to leave. I couldn't walk in my (borrowed) black stillettos and he (being chivalrous) ended up giving me a piggy back down the High St. The fact that I was wearing a short skirt and a thong didn't occur to me until he had put me down.

Then cue massive disappointment the next day when my friend J told me that he had a serious girlfriend. But it turns out he has since split with his girlfriend and we have been conducting some serious Facebook Chat flirting since then. I am finding it incredibly frustrating, in that part of me just wants to say: “ Hey, you and me, how about it?”.

However, as a staunch follower of 'The Rules' I know that I have to bide my time and wait. Wait for him to make every single move. Wait for him to do the chasing. Make myself seem busy, independent and mysterious (instead of always available, always on FB chat, and cleaning the bathroom in a pair of baggy grey pjs and huge heels). But I think his green light is on.