Day 123 – The remains of the day
Everyone keeps telling me that in time it will get easier to juggle the job, the boy and the blog, but it has been six weeks and I am still struggling. Last weekend, finding myself behind with my posts because of a busy week at work I tried to catch up. The boy was down for the weekend and my writing dug in to our time together. Though he said at the time that he did not mind, my mother later admitted that she had seen him mock tossing my little laptop from the door. Either he does not like my laptop or he is jealous of all the time we have been spending together.
To try to make him happy and to prevent the blog from coming between us I left log ins to a minimum and only wrote when he was elsewhere. Though this did mean we got a lot more time together, by the time it came to me heading home I was stressed and tearful. I had done no washing, writing or ironing and in spite of my best efforts to catch up on sleep I was still feeling tired.
After saying goodbye I managed to drive till I was just around the corner before having to pull in for a cry. Though I managed to pull it together enough to engage my natural sense of direction after the sat nav ran flat by the time I got home I was a wreck. 
I do not know why I cannot cope, it seems ridiculous really. I am a grown woman who should be quite capable of living if not acting independently and yet being away from my boyfriend for five nights a week leaves me in a mess. Though I want to stay up to get caught up on the blogs I have left behind over the weekend, tomorrow is deadline day and if I fail to get enough sleep now I’ll be all over the place in the morning. I do hope the girls are right and that sometime soon I will get better at juggling and be able to handle everything more easily with a lot less stress. Spending Sunday evening and Monday morning in tears is never a good start to the week and I am afraid that if this carries on any longer I will have no choice but to drop one of the three. What on earth is wrong with me?
- Today’s dress is on loan from Sinead Kenny. It is originally from Miss Posh. As we are getting a bit bored with the same old background and props we decide to take the pictures outside using a dandelion. It is a nice idea but my heart isn’t really in it as all I can think of during the whole shoot is my car parked behind us which I will soon have to drive away in. The dress is meant to be worn sleeveless but I do not have enough up top to make it stay there by itself so I pull on a Marks & Spencer long sleeved top and use a bobby pin to keep it in place.
Day 88 – The sweetest surprise
At half five this afternoon I was feeling a little sorry for myself. I am already missing the boy and wanted nothing more from this evening than to curl up upon his chest and have a nice cuddle whilst having a chat about our day. Alas, we are once again in a long distance relationship and it will be the end of the week before I get my wish. Feeling a little fed up I had just about resigned myself to another evening attempting to counter the curse of writers block when I got a phone call from downstairs telling me a Ms Kenny was there to see me.
I had completely forgotten that I was meant to be meeting my friend for a cup of tea after work and feeling rather relieved that the choice of whether or not to work late had been removed from my hands I hurried downstairs to greet my friend. When I got to the door I was delighted to see she was joined by another of my great girlfriends and being the emotional wreck that I am at the minute I nearly burst into tears when I saw them both. I had mentioned to them that I was having a tough time and being the lovely ladies that they are they had turned up with flowers and friendship aplenty.
Good girlfriends are worth their weight in gold and these two are of a kind which one would never trade in. As well as bringing me pretty flowers to make my desk more effeminate they also gave me a card with a sweet little message inside about how proud they were of me for following my dream. We spent a couple of hours gassing away about the latest gossip and generally just putting the world to rights. Even though I was feeling glum they managed to make me giggle and by the time we left for home I had forgotten all about my troubles.
Though being apart from the boy is going to be tough being based in the borough does mean there will be more wonderful moments like this. When I was travelling back and forth between Manchester and the Midlands I was always missing out on girly get togethers and it’s so nice to now have our little gang back together again. 
One of the greatest things about our friendship at the moment for me is that I am actually honest with them about how I am doing. In the past I would always hide away when I was down as I was too embarrassed to tell them if I was having a dark day, week or even month. They are brilliant friends because they do not back away when I am low, they keep in touch and try their best to find a way to drag me out of my melancholy mood. I am a lucky girl indeed to have friends as good as these.
- Today’s dress is on loan from my sister. It is from Florence and Fred/ Tesco and I am a little bit in love with it as it makes me feel like a forties femme fatale. The photos taken by my mother were base attempts to show off the flowers from my friends, my mother’s herb garden and the earrings sent to me by a wonderful woman from the states who writes a daily blog about the rising sun. Sometimes there is just a description of the colours but every post is pure poetry and for those wanting a break from my verbosity will love her more succinct style. http://solsticetosolsticetosolstice.tumblr.com/
Day 43 – When Charity gets Uppity
As I am having a mini-tis at Marks and Spencer and have banned the boy from buying flowers from there or going there to buy a Valentines-day meal; last year we rang up and reserved it the night before and it was lovely but this year Didsbury’s manager is a stickler and apparently “this is not something we would ever do.” So I have decided that buying their food, flowers or cards is not something I shall be doing. 
I am also a bit crotchety with them because I have tagged them and sent track-backs to them several times over the past weeks and never have I heard a word of thanks, harumph.
Anyway before I start acting like a diva about Marks and Spencers, charity shops who charge too much and other such grievances I would first like to thank those visitors from freecycle for their generosity in terms of dresses, two people have come back to me so far offering to rummage through their wardrobes or lend dresses for one wear. I would also like to thank the super star theatre lady that is Ms Anna Clayton, she has leant me two pretty dresses for the weekend and I look forwards to sharing them with you.
Well that’s now over and done let us get down to the business of today’s blog. As I could not justify my beautiful boy spending his hard-earned cash on overly priced flowers he has volunteered to instead buy me some dresses. I have told you in the past of dresses I have purchased from e-bay for minimal sums, many of which when inclusive of postage and packaging barely tip the £5 mark. 
Yesterday whilst searching for dresses, thinking I might be able to get for £20 at the most I was horrified to see how snooty many branches of charity shops have become. I noticed it before when I went to purchase books and was charged £5 for copies of Harry Potter that were so battered and smoke smelling you wondered whether they had been re-free-cycled five times over. i have no problem buying from charity shops, I enjoy knowing that when I buy things the money, well the percentage of it not given to expensive advertising campaigns, will be going to a cause. I also enjoy gifting clothing to them which is in a reasonable condition, clean and of good quality knowing that someone else will be a ble to get wear out of it and that it wont end up in a landfill someplace else.
Vivienne Westwood this week said she thought people should stop buying clothing for at least six months to stop the increasing landfill problem. Whatever your views about climate change no one can deny the harmful effects of excessive wastage. Wherever it end up every bag we throw out is one more to add to an increasing pile of crap in Scotland, China or even the local tip and the only way to stop this is to stop buying. However in an economy largely driven by consumerism to stop buying is to continue to damage the economy, so what can we do? Well we can have swap shop parties, or we can take our old unworn clothes to charity knowing they will go to a good home. 
The problem we found however, is that charity shops, spurred on by the age of Vintage becoming cool have become carried away with their pricing and are somehow managing to justify charging up to £13 for a Next dress and around £7 on average even at times for Primark and George. It is a total joke because we went in yesterday ready to spend £20 and left in disgust at the fact this would buy us only two dresses and had we went to eBay we could have triple the amount of dresses. It is silly because people spend more when they feel they are getting value for money, less or nothing at all when they feel they are getting ripped off.
I wonder whether charity shops need to get with the rest of the fashion industry and realise the importance of discounting fashion otherwise they may find themselves getting left with people unwilling to give away old clothes when they know they are demanding an unreasonable amount for them. I wish charity shops would use a system of credits whereby if you give you get credits to buy new books or clothing, not a large amount just a quarter or a third of the proposed selling price, either that or they just stop ripping people off and get down off their high horse upon which they ride with Marks and Spencer’s Didsbury branch.
Day 95 – Hallaton hoe down
April 6, 2010 at 8:54 pm (bipolar, Bottle Kicking, Charity, Countryside, dresses, Environment, Fashion, Fashion crime, Fitness, Hallaton, Long distance relationships, Market Harborough, Medbourne, Mend and make do, mental health, Movement to stop Uggs making the world ugly, Newspapers, photography, Scallywags, Style, The boy, Uncategorized, Vintage, War) (http://larawilliams.wordpress.com/, http://lucypeel.com/2010/04/06/hare-pie-scramble-bottle-kicking/, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/05/bottle-kicking-hallaton-medbourne, http://www.harboroughmail.co.uk/leisure/SEE-your-bottlekicking-photos-and.6199868.jp)
Some of you may have heard of this sport before but for the uninitiated, a little explanation will hopefully suffice. The competition, which is believed to date back a thousand years, sees villagers from both side of the brook compete to get the bottle back to their village. The only rules are no strangling and no gouging other than that competitors may do whatsoever they wish to return each of the three ceremonial bottles, filled to the brim with ale for the champions to drink, back to their village.
As it turns out the Bottle Kicking contest is hands down the best way to spend a Bank Holiday. When we arrive, we cast away our city reservations and get right in with the crowd by tagging along with the parade towards the centre of Hallaton village. We passed Medbourne on the drive down here and though i am accustomed to supporting the underdog the boy and my bestest persuaded me to side with the winners and align myself with the Hallaton men.
As I am reporting from the battle field I feel it would be rather rude to take sides so in the interests of soaking up the atmosphere I decide to follow the scrum wherever it may go.
I always thought I would do quite well in a war situation. Though I am petite, I am fast, strong and sneaky and as I had been a bit of a British Bulldog champ as a child I has rather assumed I may be of use to the scrum. As it turns out I am a horrible hindrance in battle. Though I keep on trying to sneak my way into the middle, whenever the lads start to drift towards me, I scream like a girl and run away as fast as I can telling everyone in my path to run for their lives. Everywhere I look there are fallen champions who are pinching at bloodied noses, gasping for breath and doing their best to slip shoulders back into place. There is a fantastic cross-section of society at this event and everywhere I look I can see society’s barriers broken down by the united aim of getting the bottle back to base.
I am fascinated to see women in the huddle who appear tougher than the men they challenge. One girl tells me she has been punched in the ribs by a rather rude chap but assures me she managed to get her own back. Whilst looking him directly in the eye she elbowed him straight to the steriles. I am amazed at what good fun the whole day is. We chase the scrum up and down the hill, through the hedges and over the fences and only after the games are done do we find the time to rest our weary heads upon the hill. There may have been blood shed, there may have been hate, but all this was over once the bottles were brought hurtling over the hill of Hallaton’s gate.
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