Smokingboot

The thing about pagan chums is that eventually, someone is going to get herbal at you.

Popular beauty products are never au naturelle even if they start that way. It can kind of put the mockers on 'natural' products, cos while concotions of rosehips and oatmeal sound wonderful, they aren't going to iron out one's deepest corrugations, unlike a forehead full of cow poison, or some surgeon just pulling your face up over your head. Creme de Mer, one of the worlds most expensive face creams, can knock you back a good £800 for a big pot of some patented wonderkelp, leaving me to wonder if maybe I got it wrong in my spirulina chewing days. Maybe I should have smeared it on my face instead of trying to eat it. Anyhoo...

I have a whole bunch of chums who do wonderful things with strange but natural non-animal abusing creams. One friend gave me this pot of stuff that was heavilly rose scented. I quite liked it, even when she warned me not to wear it in day time because of photosynthesis(?) Anyway I did wear it in day time, and got strange white blotches on my skin. Then there was the one that was a fantastic moisturiser, made more interesting by the inclusion of camphor in the mix; this started off with a nice grassy smell that soon devolved to a strange fishiness. Maybe it did my skin good, it certainly did not help my lovelife, cos my boyfriend wouldn't stand within three feet of me while I wore it.

Now an excellent chum has made me some bonafide Queen of Hungary water. This recipe's been knocking around for centuries, and basically amounts to herbs and flowers steeped in alcohol, often brandy. Apparently romany gypsies would drink it, bathe in it, wash their hair in it... certainly it seems to be a light and rather lovely toner. She got the herbs from her own garden, lemon balm and rosemary, loads of comfrey etc, and being a hypo-allergic kind of girl, I don't use it more than 3 times a week. It's pretty good. The only thing is she chose vinegar as the carrier. If I wear it I smell like a salad dressing and again the man hangs back with the signal observation, 'This is one of those things your friends made, isn't it?'

I like this stuff a lot, and might consider trying to make some myself, if I could grow all the herbs. But what to do about the brandy/vinegar conundrum? Vodka perhaps? I can see the benefits...

All the below shows is the obvious re the Arctic Monkeys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWHkR4O8cyc

This weekend saw us in the company of chums november_girl and ephraim. It became a throwback to the old days of november_girl's flat, where folk would eat, drink and pass out, usually leaving larians and november_girl to sit and talk til dawn, only to wake much later at the behest of a late lunch/football match/whatever.

I'm having a minor regression myself. Gone is this year's earlier sparkly-nailed, sunkissed boot, not quite golden tan streaks down her arm, not quite blonde streaks in her hair. The nails have come off, and I've decided they need a rest, so now all that's left are my own chunky little nails painted ruby, like a punk rocker's kid sister. The so-called tan has gone with the so-called summer, and the hair?

Ah well, the hair. I decided to take a leaf from a certain velvet_the_cat and try Lush Shop's henna powder, branded by Lush's happy marketers as 'Caca' because that's what it looks like. Some joke.

( Adventures with caca. )

So right now, the person in the mirror is a brown haired white skinned freckled woman with stubby nails. Well, my rota starts again next week, and I will sparkle this up as appropriate, cos I love that aspect of my work, but today I also like what I see. Been thinking about the past recently. Have decided to keep the good bits.
Now, back to 505.

No, too embarrassing! I cannot do that meme everyone's into, despite my desperate desire to be cuddled and flattered right now.

It has provoked some interesting thoughts though. Recently, a chum who's on the show was discussing cosmetic surgery with me. She knows a salariman's wife with considerable expertise on top notch under the knife enhancement. Apparently now is the time to do it, before the rot sets in; prevention is better than cure etc, etc. Friend is suggesting we go get a free consultation on what might best assist us. I am sanguine, ready to consider this a waste of time right now...and then I check out my skin and teeth. Uh-oh. the latter will only become important in dealing with Statesiders, cos they do seem to fixate on the horrors of British dentistry or lack of it. Why are our teeth so bad, I wonder? Bleaching those suckers looks more and more likely, but I really don't see myself wearing a retainer or resetting my jaw to straighten my overbite. And my skin...no, I don't want to turn this into a long post.

I read back and find I have found four instances of the word 'No' in this post. For now at least, I'm treating it as a decision made at the back of my head. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with cosmetic surgery - people should be happy with the way they look, and if that's what it takes, so be it - but don't feel the need right now, plus I'm too busy plus I've no money. And my honey is afraid I am going to be 'consulted' right into unnecessary unhappiness about aspects of my face/figure.

TV's a narcissistic world, we can look at ourselves for too long. Other people's creativity is the cure. So for non-neurotic makeovers, check out awesome_places and the latest post on art_nouveau. Stunning!

First, thank you to those mystery cupids who sent me valentines. I am pleased, bashful and slightly mystified!

Alas, this year I had no time to be a mystery cupid myself; time I would normally have spent in an internet cafe sending out cryptic and largely pointless teasers to people I like was instead spent in the University hospital on Warren Street. It's a long story.

More trauma came from my first view of the channel's ads I worked on. What is wrong with these people? I caught a glimpse of one just before I was rushed into a pre-show brief. They were all telling me how good it looked. I was the colour of margarine! They said it was the monitor. So I have just seen one of the ads on my home tv. *Holds head in hands*

Now I do not suffer from the seemingly very British inability to take a compliment; if you tell me I am wearing a pretty dress and I think so too, I will merely thank you and agree with you; I wouldn't put it on if I thought it was ugly, so I will not spiral into that graceless shuffle of 'What this old thing? I just threw it on after washing the floor with
it ...you think I'm pretty? Oh, that's just make up, I'm a gargoyle really ... you like my watch? I think it's horrid, I only wear it cos my aunt bought it for me ... ' I never get the point of this bizarre self abnegation. So when I say I don't look good, believe me I am not being modest, nor am I looking for reassurance. I am just stating the brutal truth.

I don't look good in these ads.

I look like a reject from the Human League.

Why do they all bang on about my hair? Are we on different planets or something? It is clearly far too dark under the light. I look as though I borrowed it off Marilyn Manson.
My freckles, fringe, and double chin do not help. Anything.

But the star of the show is undoubtedly the mole beneath my right eye; combined with the eyeliner the effect is very peculiar. The guy who shot the footage told me I was a natural. A natural what? Seventeenth century goth with no wardrobe?

I know, I know, looks aren't everything, and to worry about a few seconds of dodgy footage is shallow. Still.

Bottoms.

*sigh*

Shallow bottoms.

So, my last couple of shifts were intense: One of the most successful shows they'd ever produced they said, followed by a show that felt like a stinker to me; they won't have it though. The producer sat me through a debrief telling me how well I presented to the camera; I am wondering if there is a secret stash of cocaine in the studio no-one has told me about. They seem determinedly cheerful and nothing ever goes wrong. I have this feeling they are pimping me up so that I become all the pretty things they call me. It's a weird headspace, weirder after our first sunny weekend. Freckles! Thaasands of 'em! My upper lip has entirely disappeared under a moustache of said offenders. I 'm going to need a lot of warpaint to hide these from the cameras. All the presenters have gorgeous Essex girl San Tropez tans, even and glowing. Right now I look like Tommy Steele in some 50s film about leprauchauns and magic boots.

It is nice to be called pretty; the feeling of shimmery coyness couldn't see me past the exhaustion that dogged me this weekend, which wasn't about a pretty woman but a beautiful one. Excellent chum Em sans lj got married. She has always had a kind of nordic bright fair strong look to her, the kind of woman who can bake a cake and invade Poland in the same week. Well, Saturday came and the bride looked beautiful in a totally unexpected chocolate dress shot through with shades of aubergine, clear and caramel crystals sparkling in her tiara. Around her swam a world of golden balloons, white roses and deferent ushers in chocolate brown suits and cream waistcoats. She was beautiful, not just because she was radiantly happy (the failsafe creator of beauty in all seasons) but because she really is seriously beautiful Strange how one forgets these things about close friends.

And now time to forget everything and sleep.