by
cynobitya
@ 2007-12-01 - 15:51:18
Golly gosh… what a hectic crazy few weeks I’ve had. There’s been plenty of fun, a few tears (happy ones and sad ones), some new friends made, and some old friendships laid to rest, and of course lots and lots of ranting and soul searching liberally lubricated with more vodka and wine than ought to be strictly necessary. Where shall I start? This will be a long post, I’m guessing now it’ll take about 8 minutes to read through the whole thing. I’ve not written it all yet but we can check when I’m finished!
Lets start with a rant. No in fact let’s start with a revelation I had about the function of blogs. As part of my course work I am required to keep a blog of the progress of one of our group tasks. This ostensibly is so that when we come to write our analysis of ourselves and each other in our reflective essay, we will have a good record of how we felt at different points in the process. This alone is laughable since I fully anticipate that most people will make up how they feel in lieu of actually putting the work in now. However I digress, the point I was going to make was that we had a class all about how to fill in a blog – talk about teaching your granny to suck eggs!! But there was one useful point that came out of the exercise, and that was a point made by our tutor that our blogs ought to be reflective and not just descriptive. No-one really wants to hear in excruciating detail about what he said and what she said and what he said back and what you did after. We humans are nosey creatures. What we really want to know is how alike our thinking is to that of people we consider our peers. If you find accord between you and others, it validates you. And we all want validation. Really we do! This was something I had been thinking about – what makes a good blog. And now I have my answer. A good blog is one where you go on a journey with your writer and have some kind of learning experience. I think I do this as a matter of course anyway but it’s still good to know that someone else thinks it’s a good way to write a blog. (See – validation!). Either that or the blog has to be wildly funny with acute insight into human nature. You decide!
Ok rant – just a little one but none the less, one about something which consistently lets my sisters down. In this day and age of “How to Look Good Naked” and “What Not to Wear” we are accelerating the culture of vanity that we (including me, I am just as bad) buy into.
Why?
A quick and hopefully obvious answer is of course to attract a mate. I know that I will probably offend some bra burning bleating liberal carpet munchers, and I do concede that gay relationships throw a bit of spanner in the works of this theory but I have no intention of exploring that here. Ride with me on this for a bit.
We shouldn’t kid ourselves that “How to Look Good Naked” is anything other than a ploy to make us feel sexy and therefore mate and reproduce. I don’t see this particularly as a bad thing. I rather enjoy the jolly old thing. However, in my humble opinion, everything eventually can be traced back to an evolutionary need to reproduce. Virtually everything we do is programmed to increase our attractiveness to the opposite sex and therefore increase our chances of getting a mate and producing issue. Why is it that the faces of women that are judged the most attractive all have the same attributes? Because men are programmed to compete for the healthiest female in the group in order to increase his chances of producing many offspring, thus they have been naturally selected for over the generations to favour physical attributes which suggest health and fertility. Why are women universally attracted to powerful strong masculine men? In terms of evolution, these strong powerful men present the best option for providing for mother and growing child. Women are hardly likely to go for the chap who spreads his wild oats around, he becomes unreliable and his other children will take vital resources away from my growing child. Yes I accept that someone women habitually go for cheating men, or even married ones. I’m not going to look into that here.
I think these preferences are deeply hardwired genetic logic. Now, of course there is massive variance even within cultures and I’ve probably not explained very well the subtleties or assumed connections between these ideas (I’m rushing), nor have I made any account for why some people are attracted to members of the same sex, or indeed why unlikely relationships form which would seem to fly in the face of these ideas, but I assume anyone with an ounce of intelligence ought to follow my thinking. But this is not the subject of my rant. No gentle reader… wriggle more comfortably into your seat and listen a while.
Now, if we take these assumptions as gospel, we as women ought to be trying our best to seem competent capable, sassy savvy girlies in order to attract the best most powerful mate. Fast forward a while from our cavemen ancestors to 2007 Edinburgh and the dating rat race that goes with it. We shop in Karen Millen, Hobbes, Harvey Nicholls Jenners and bijou boutiques. We have our hair done by Stefan, and Maria-Alrorannia does our nails. We sweep though the early evening streets on our way home from work having very carefully re-applied our makeup in the office. Our well cut coat screams money, our chic handbag insinuates an indulgence afforded only by those who have a mad mad extravagant duke to bestow favours on us as a parent gives sweets to a child. We hear the clip clop of expensive shoes on concrete before we see her, and as we turn to look, our eye takes in the impressive sight of, wait a moment, what DOES she have on her feet? That elegant clip clop was not the sound of well heeled boots from Jones. In fact there is NOTHING well heeled about these shoes; that is the problem.
I get so disappointed I want to shake these women. You spend a fortune on wonderful clothes, you look fabulous and are dripping in understated glory and yet you allow the heels of your shoes to wear down to nothing, the leather ripping up from the stiletto like some cheap linoleum off a tired kitchen floor. I know for a fact it costs roughtly £8.00 to have shoes reheeled. I do it constantly as I believe that a good pair of comfortable shoes makes not only the outfit but the woman. Theres another rant in here about fashion another time perhaps. BUT NO!! These ladies spoil the carefully constructed look by the abomination that is shoes which have lost the heel; wearers that have lost the plot more like. Further more, not only does it look tacky beyond recrimination, it makes you wobble and peter perilously which could well break your ankle. Ladies it’s DANGEROUS!
You all show yourselves as frauds. In my opinion no real well-heeled women would go out unless she was well heeled. How can I aspire to be you when you let me down so crushingly? Yes, I judge you when you allow your shoes to ruin your outfit. Get it sorted.
In other news. I went to Sarah and Stephens wedding in Guernsey. It was total chaos. I had the onerous responsibility of making the wedding cake. Although they all ate it, it was pretty diabolical. We left her flowers in the house and had to run full pelt through the streets of St Peters Port, barefoot to get them. Turned up at the wrong venue and arrived to find the chaps hadn’t got there yet. Like I said chaos. But glorious wonderful honest loving chaos. I honestly felt my heart swell with pride to see my best friend so happy, looking so beautiful, with baby in tow. It was quite unlike any wedding I’ve ever been to before. Big happy champagne soaked tearful chaos. I loved it.
Some of you may be aware I spilt up with Phil. It wasn’t particularly acrimonious. We’re just going in different directions; he’s ready to settle and wants a missus to have his tea on the table when he comes in from work, quite nights in front of the TV, Saturday afternoons in Ikea and two boozy holidays a year. That just isn’t me. It was an unpleasant few days with all the associated feelings of failure and self doubt. I think I’m out the other end of it now. It really was the most sensible solution – he was never getting a chance to see me as I was always either working or studying. In my list of priorities alas he came quite low. Poor love. I really hope he’s ok, I think he was a bit cut up. Also means I can concentrate on studying and working. It is a bit of an unnatural state for me to be in; to have no male attention. I feel a bit spare, like a bottle opener the morning after the party the night before. Well used but probably wont’ get another outing for a while.
There actually was a whole lot more I wanted to write but it’s time to go to work now… I’ve been writing for an hour and 40 minutes. I doubt it’ll take 8 minutes to read… I’ll do a quick comprehension check… wait here….
…
….
Approx five minutes. Just enough time left for some lists and nice words.
My top five Disney Characters
1. Mary Poppins
2. The dancing mushrooms from fantasia
3. Thumper
4. Jiminy Cricket
5. The Queen of Hearts
Words
Archaic, waltz, goblin, plaudit, Scout, ambidextrous, Aphorism, innocuous, defenestrate, dotage, blithe, querulous, hologram, vicissitudes, masticate.
I shall get back into good habits of posting… here is a list of things I’ve been meaning to post about I will accept votes for which ones you’d like to hear.
Why everything has to be fashionable
Unreasonable arguments
Sisters in law
Sliding up the corporate ladder
Men
Angst
Essential oils.
Airports
Theatricals for next year
Facebook
Ebay addiction and online grocery shopping
Womens anti aging products
Answers through the usual channels.
Still bored? I overheard this gem in Waitrose the other day (yes how terribly middle class I am).
Well dressed chap in his late 40’s I think, was standing in front of me at the checkout. He seemed to be shopping just for one, (lots of wine, a few luxury microwave meals, balsamic vinegar, sour cream, nuts and nibbles, fresh pasta, several somethings from the deli counter, toothpaste, shampoo (blokey variety) a reasonable selection of fruit and veg, but in quantities that suggested cooking for one – actually as I think this one through I wish I’d got his number – he was cute!).
Anyway I was behind him at the checkout and witnessed the following conversation:
Checkout girl, “Would you like cashback?”
Cute Chap, “Yes please.”
Checkout girl, “How much?”
Cute Chap “All of it”
It sailed completely over her head and she looked blankly at Cute Chap while I caught his eye and sniggered like a care in the community case.
Keepin’ it real homies keepin’ it real.