Ill Gotten Gains

It is a desperately dangerous time of year for me.  It’s not that I get overcome by festive cheer, for as we know, I am a miserable old curmudgeon and loathe Christmas with an intensity only surpassed by my hatred of New Year’s Eve.  No there is no danger of me choking to death on the mince pie of jollity.

It is the spending. Oh God! The spending.  The thing is. As we already know. I am really, really good at spending money. In fact one might say that it is a skill.  A skill which I hone, craft and sharpen over the weeks and months.  Most of the year I try to be good (ish), but Christmas is where it all goes the shape of the pear tree (with partridge).

The thing is right, you see. One is allowed to spend money at Christmas, positively encouraged even.  This flagrant relaxing of the financial rules tends to send me a bit light headed.  That and the fact that the shops are wreathed with shiny and desirable things that are calling to me with their siren song.  ‘Kaaaayyyytteeeeee!  Kaaaayyyyyteeeeee! Buuuuuuuuyyyyyy mmmeeeeeeee!’

I start with all the best intentions and buy things for other people. Then I tend to let the odd thing for me slip in.  I still have not gotten entirely over the shock of knowing that as a child, Christmas was there solely to fatten the coffers of my toy box, and being inundated with presents, to the rude awakening to adulthood of receiving undesirable presents from people who buy them out of a sense of duty rather than any real knowledge of my personal habits, and added to that a 95% reduction in the number of gifts with which I am showered.  I sulk, because I am a child of the commercial age, I am selfish, and I like nice things.  I could never live in a yurt, sustaining myself with quinoa and recycled shoes made out of old car tyres.

The problem arises when I have run out of gifts to buy for other people.  By now, the floodgates of my mercenary lust are well and truly open and I am in compulsive spending mode.  That’s when things get really out of hand.  Witness today.

Today I went to Melton Market with Oscar, my dad and my brother.  Here is what I bought. For me. With no thought of others flitting across my tiny, desire filled brain.

1. 1950′s floral quilted throw, in this pattern:

I don’t know why I like it, but I do.  And it was only a fiver.

2. Half a doll’s tea set in Willow Pattern:

I have a collection of ratty old china that nobody else wants. I have cups, saucers, cups and saucers, odd bits of doll’s tea sets, lids and broken things that everyone else discards.  I am particularly taken with tiny things like this. My children will hate me when I die and bequeath them fourteen tonnes of random china.  This whole lot was only a quid, which cheered my heart no end. How could I not buy it? And it is so very dinky.

3. More ratty old china in a weird sixties (or maybe fifties) pattern:

Again. Not sure why I like it, except that it sort of matches the quilt, and is spectacularly retro.  A bargain at £3.

4. A tureen with no lid.

I am obsessed with bowls. I have run out of spaces to put bowls in my kitchen. They are now nested inside each other on my kitchen surfaces I have so many. I just love them.  I’d probably do away with plates and just go bowl mad if I lived alone.  This was another bargain.  £3.  And the plastic dinosaur striding around the prehistoric world of satsumas? 50p to you and a very, happy three year old to me.

4. A Dresden beaker:

I know why I bought this.  I bought it because it is eggshell fine and sings when you hold it. The colours are fresh and exquisite, the painting is immaculate and it is a thing of beauty.  The petals of the chrysanthemums have fine gold paint on them and it is just lush. It’s also why I paid £8 for it.  I really pushed the boat out here.  This is the thing I am most pleased with. Consequently it is the one I will drop first.

5. A Poole Saucer

This is more of an investment piece. I once bought a piece of Poole pottery for which I paid 50p and which I sold for over £100.  This cost £3.  I don’t think it’s very rare, but if I don’t smash it, one day it might be.  It’s for my running away fund.

And then. On the way home we went to the farm shop and I filled a bag with goodies for the Christmas table. 

I really need someone to take me firmly in hand at this point.  Someone to beat me round the head with a spoon and shout things like:

• ‘Just how many bloody broken teacups does one woman need?’
• ‘You are not a doll. You do not own a doll. Why are you buying tea sets for dolls? You moron.’
• ‘Your house is increasingly beginning to resemble Aunty Wainwright’s Emporium.  You are turning into your parents. Both of them.’
• ‘GET A GRIP’.

This is your job internets. Jason has tried, but it is to no avail.  Partly it is because I am deaf and I can’t hear a bloody word anyone says at the moment. Yep. You read it right. Deaf. 

Despite the fact that I am keeping the Hopi Ear Candle business in business, and am managing to extrude enough wax to start a small candle factory of my own, I have started to go quite deaf over the last fortnight.  Things came to a head last week when we went out for dinner and I couldn’t actually hear a word the waiter was saying to me.  I hate it when something comes between me and my dinner, particularly ear wax.  Urgh!

I went to see the doctor yesterday. She peered into my ears and was amazed that I could hear anything at all.  Apparently my right ear in particular is so bunged up that it’s a wonder it hasn’t exploded.  I have to go next week to have my ears syringed, as the gentle burning of my cranium is just not making enough inroads on the Katyboo ear wax mountain to be of much use.  I am quite excited about being able to hear again, I must say.  Plans for a festive ear trumpet wreathed in mistletoe have been put to one side.

So. Please don’t shout at me. It won’t do a bit of good.  But write me stern and admonishing notes about the nature of my sins and and beat me with virtual twigs. 

Go on. You know you want to.

The international language of katy – in pictures

1.  Helas! The World is against me. Everything has gone tragically wrong. I may never play the violin again…Sigh

2. I am very sad. I am tragically sad. Nobody in the entire history of ever, has ever, ever been as sad as I am now. See, even that picture of a pygmy jerboa just makes me think of my own mortality. We will all die. It is so……sad.

3. Oh My Good God! I wasn’t joking was I? It’s all gone horribly wrong, and now we’re going to die in a weltering blood bath of gore, mayhem and shrieking. There may even be daleks it’s that bad.  It’s so very bad I cannot possibly watch any longer.

4. Hang on a minute! There’s something fishy going on here (apart from the hair). 

5. Oh Yes Indeedy Sirreee Bob! It has all become clear to me now.  Thank God I am fully dressed and not in a bath.

6.  Yes. You. You at the back. It’s all your fault.  Prepare to reap the whirlwind.

7.  Shhh! Promise not to tell anyone where the bodies are buried.

8. Does anyone know where we can get a decent brew in this godforsaken place. I always get thirsty after a little light slaying.

9. And a spot of musical cabaret wouldn’t go amiss at this time of night.

Fin.

Another rambling post about nothing

I gave myself yesterday off.  Not because I was being good, or needed rewarding or anything noble, merely because it was one of those days where my insomnia finally catches up on me and I spent the whole day sitting down and then falling asleep.  I am like the dormouse in Alice’s teapot.  I was fine as long as I kept moving and people prodded me. The minute I relaxed, it was game over.  The memories of the day read a bit like Kurtz deep in the jungle in Heart of Darkness.  Faces swimming out of the mist while I shudder with horror and people demand things of me in voices I cannot understand.

I do remember shouting quite a lot in the more wakeful moments.  When I am very tired, and being interrupted I tend to be quite fiercely intolerant (not like all the other times when I am merely intolerant), and I did not suffer fools, or anyone else, very gladly for that matter.  I was a bit like Father Jack from Father Ted.  ‘Drink! Feck! Girls!’ etc, shout, rant, moan.

I am feeling rather more balanced today, probably thanks to the catch up on the sleep front.  That and the fact that I don’t have to do another school disco for another three months at the very least.  And the girls have been with UE all day.  He has taken them swimming and to see ‘Where The Wild Things Are.’  I don’t envy him the swimming,  but I quite fancied ‘Where The Wild Things Are.’  I shall have to swear them to secrecy and wait until the DVD comes out at the library.

Oscar and I have been painting this afternoon.  He was given a ceramic dinosaur for his birthday.  It comes with paints and stickers and a device to make it roar. You put it all together, paint it, and voila.  A hideous, noisy, ceramic dinosaur for your viewing pleasure.  He had an absolutely lovely time with it. He painted it one colour, and then he painted over it with another colour, and then another, until it was about four feet thick.  He told me that this was making it ‘multi coloured.’  I did not argue. It is now patchwork in places but largely breen.  Breen, as we have discussed before on these pages, is the colour all paint goes once it has been mixed together long enough.  It is also the colour of the universe. Regardless of what those astronomers tell you.  I know it. 

I had to paint to.  It was a participatory sport.  I have been painting some alphabet pictures which, depending on how well they go will either end up as a present for some friends who are having a baby soon, or in the bin.  I am currently divided on the subject.  Oscar thinks they’re rubbish because I didn’t allow him to help me.  I am so mean.  Apart from fighting off a paint ridden three year old, I found it quite therapeutic.  I am reasonably crap unless I am copying something, and then I’m alright. I’m copying pictures I like out of some of the kids books to make up the alphabet. My two favourites so far are quite a reasonable rendition of Mog from Meg and Mog for ‘C’ and a huge, blue and white floral elephant for ‘E’ which I have copied from Charlie and Lola.  I am up to G and my hand hurts, so I am resting.

Oscar has also spent large parts of the afternoon calling me Annabel.  He likes this name. It is my best name.  He is my father apparently.  He is twenty six and still goes to nursery.  I am sixty eleven, and still go to school. He gets out of nursery every day to pick me up and take me home.  Sometimes he makes me drink poisoned wee out of bottles, but this is o.k. because it makes your sore knees better.  Phew!

As you may have ascertained, Jason is also out.  He went to play poker this afternoon and failed to win me a fortune. Now he has gone to his friend’s house to play Dungeons and Dragons. He never wins a fortune at this either, which makes me even more convinced that it is rubbish.

I am sort of pleased he has gone out.  Once Oscar is in bed I have the house to myself for the evening.  Oscar didn’t want tea and as he hasn’t stopped eating fruit and cereal and yogurt since eight o’clock this morning I don’t feel the need to force him to eat meat and two veg. This means with Jason out I can suit myself later.  This translates as toast and marmite and slices of Panettone with a pint of tea.  Yay me.  I can also luxuriate in the bath until I turn into a prune and sneer at home improvement programmes on the telly until my eyes fall out.

The downside is that I need to write some more of my essay and now is the perfect time. I have no excuses.  None at all, and if I don’t do it, I will be a fool to myself.  I am a fool quite often, so perhaps it is time to be sensible, and bribe myself with the bath afterwards.  We shall see.

Bitter, Moi?

I am being ninja mother.  It is the dreaded disco night and it’s all hands on deck to make sure that my children  can wear inappropriate clothing for the time of year, and strut about throwing shapes to Who Let The Dogs Out.  Who says I am not dedicated to the cause of parenting?

Tallulah’s started at five o’clock, so it was straight home from school to throw myself on the oven and slave to produce something resembling tea, which I then shovelled into their faces at lightning speed shouting ‘Raus! Raus!’ and poking them with twigs.  I have just picked her up from an ‘ace’ time.  Now I have an hour to unwind before going out into the freezing fog again with Tilly.  And again an hour later to pick her up.  I shall finally sit down properly at about half past ten tonight if I’m lucky. 

I have already upset both of them by refusing to let them wear a) make up and b) high heels.  Although where they thought they were getting high heels from when I’m the only person in the house who wears them and even I can’t walk in them, I’m not entirely sure.  I expect they had some cunning plan to fashion some out of bubble wrap and cardboard.  No dice.  Tallulah asked me when I would let her wear high heels.  I told her that she can have as many pairs as she likes when she’s twenty eight.  She trotted in to the disco, satisfied.  The other parents in the queue looked at me, baffled and alarmed.  Whether by my cruelty or her failure to grasp the concept of time in all its glory it was hard to say.  I care not.  By that time I had been waiting for ten minutes in a slow moving train of people with Oscar wearing his pyjamas and shooting people and I was ready to go home.

The disco takes a very long time to get going because despite the numerous entrance and exits to the school they always insist on opening the doors at the far end of the playground, still allowing cars to drive up and down, despite the fact that it is a rather narrow lane which all the children are then queueing on, and they only have one door open for everyone to go in and out of.  Planning is not really their forte.  It means that by the time parents have queued for ten minutes with their hysterically excited children, they are ready to kill and be killed just to get out of the cold and the path of oncoming cars, and then when they’ve finally got the child in the right slot, they are just as desperate to get out and get home for a cup of tea, before having to go out again and repeat the whole, futile process in reverse.

I am going to get a cup of tea, thaw out, and minister to my husband who ate some ill advised fish at lunch time and is now hunched under a blanket on the sofa, scowling because he is starving AND feels sick.  I think he is putting it on because he doesn’t want to do the disco run.  I can’t say I blame him.  If I had thought of it first, it would have been me on that sofa being waited on.

Another Bloody Play

Jason has never been to a Christmas play as a parent before.  Usually the spare ticket has always gone to UE. This year UE could not make it and Jason had the dubious pleasure.  And dubious it was indeed.  At one point, about half way through the first trillion years, he leaned across to me and said: ‘How come everyone else’s children are way more rubbish than ours?’ in a stentorian whisper.  I clouted him firmly.  I am hoping that the lynch posse will not be waiting for me one dark, winter’s evening.

The play was baffling, which was surprising, given that the nativity was the first play I ever acted in or went to and it hasn’t changed much over the years.  It was also wildly overlong and seemed to be made up of a random string of unrelated events starring hundreds of leaden footed children staring into the middle distance festooned in tinsel.

I do not know why they don’t either;

a) do individual class plays, which would be shorter and less tedious and stressful for everyone involved.

b) do concerts instead of plays, where it is appropriate for four million children to be involved instead of doing a one size clearly doesn’t fit all play.

c) both of the above

d) and this is my preference.  Not bother at all.

Half the school were involved in this one nativity play.  As you can imagine this means lots and lots of angels, shepherds, camels, rabbits, stars and other such extraneous characters, because the nativity play is actually quite sparsely populated.  This year they missed a trick by not having an inn keeper, which was a bit disappointing.  Nor were there any donkeys. There were however, tons and tons of children dressed as camels.  Two children to one camel part.  Luckily they were not linked physically together as this could have caused chaos.  Just expecting both parts of the camel children to do the same thing at the same time was taxing enough.

Tallulah was a star in both senses of the word.  She was a very earnest, frowning star.  She takes every job she does very seriously indeed and therefore gravity was her watchword.  She scowled, frowned and pursed her way through a dance routine to ‘Catch a Falling Star’ and only wobbled once when Jason pulled a funny face at her and her mouth almost crinkled into a smile.

The best bit of the whole evening was meeting a friend whose son was in the orchestra.  By orchestra they mean, ‘group of extraneous children who needed something to do and they had run out of camel  costumes.’  He got to play the wood blocks.  Originally he was meant to be half a camel, but he was ill last week and his half was given to someone else.  So, when he came back he found they had relegated him to the orchestra.  Bear in mind he is only five. 

He was not best pleased.  His teacher broke the news whereupon he pronounced: ‘I didn’t want to be a bloody camel.  And now I don’t want to be in the bloody orchestra.’ 

She remonstrated with him and told him he had no choice.  He scowled.  She produced the wood blocks (i.e. two offcuts of 2by4 that you smash together).  He was even more unimpressed and showed his enthusiasm by saying: ‘That’s not even a bloody instrument.’

Fair play to him.  If I were world dictator he’d have a medal for that. As it was, he spent quite a lot of time in solitary and still ended up playing the wood blocks.

I like the fact that he scowled throughout.  It’s good to make a point and stick to it.  I bet he doesn’t get to do them next year.

It’s not what it should be, but I am trying

I have a blog post with pictures all lined up for you, only I have mislaid the camera under a pile of crap somewhere.  I also have an impending trip to Tallulah’s school play, which will undoubtedly supply a ready source of material, but which is not until tonight. I have other photos of things to take and blog about, but as we know, I have mislaid the camera somewhere.  Which is why this post will be about none of those things.  Instead I am going to do a good, old fashioned list type blog.  This time though I decided to try and vary it a bit by alternating good and bad things.  It’s not exactly a breakthrough in modern technology which will save the lives of millions, but it gives me something to do and keeps me off the streets.

1. I had to brave the post office today and post billions of parcels.  Naturally I got there and there was a queue.
2. I got home to find several parcels waiting for me.  Some of them were even for me.  Sharon sent me the most lovely parcel which contained two fabulous angel decorations for my tree (photos later when camera is unearthed) and a gorgeous pair of fingerless gloves for when I am too miserly to put the heating on and still want to type without my fingers dropping off.  I also received a copy of Poppy Adams’ The Behaviour of Moths.  The librarian recommended it when I said I loved Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger.  Then of course they didn’t have a copy available for me to borrow.  I treated myself.  I hasten to add it was only a penny from an Amazon seller.  I am not going to be made homeless. Yet.  Very nice to receive parcels that were not paid for by me and for someone else.
3. Even though I had taken him to the toilet five minutes before we went to the post office, as soon as we got the first parcel out of my giant bag of parcels, Oscar announced he wanted to wee and in stentorian tones when I told him he would have to wait said: ‘I will just hold my willy still so that no wee leaks out then.’
4. Even though he wanted to wee.  He didn’t, until we got outside and I allowed him to piss up someone’s garden wall.  We did not get arrested and he did not fill his shoes.  Result.
5. I took Oscar out for lunch for the second day running.  He ate chips for the second day running.
6. We went out for lunch.  I did not have to cook.  I did not have to think.
7. We went to the local Loros charity shop and I bought Oscar a huge Dalek for £1.  I only bought it for him because the lady in the shop told me it was a) broken and b) the batteries didn’t work.  All the gain, none of the pain.  Then, when we were crammed into the photo booth in the Co-op while I was having my photo taken, I leaned on the bag, which then threatened to exterminate me in a very gruff voice.  Oscar is thrilled that it works.  I nearly wept, and almost spoiled the photos.
8. We went to the local Loros charity shop and I got a gorgeous M&S navy silk skirt with ribbon detail with all the tags still on for £3.00.  Plus it was a size ten and I didn’t have to breathe in.  I also got a black, wrap dress for £2.50.
9. We went to the photo booth because I had to have my photo taken to renew my photo ID on my provisional driving licence, which I’ve now had for ten years.  It’s going to cost me £20, plus the £4.00 for the photos.  Gougers.  I had to go into the photo booth with me, Oscar, a surprising Dalek, two shopping bags, a handbag and a bag full of library books and parcels.  It was not dignified or comfortable.  The photos make me look like a serial killer.
10. Oscar did not pop up in the middle of the photo, thus wasting four pounds and making me do it all again, despite his threats to do so.  Plus, the pictures are so terrible they might cancel my driving licence all together in case my face makes other people squeal with horror, crash and die.  Let us pray.
11. It is the school play tonight.  It will go on for hours and hours and hours of my life.  Hours which I will never get back.  I do not well up watching my little darling festooned in tinsel, prancing around on stage.  I just feel murderous and/or hysterical with laughter.  All the other parents stare and me and ‘tsk’.
12. It is the school play tonight.  It will be hugely entertaining in terms of bored, inappropriately behaved children and overenthusiastic parents.  I know I cannot post pictures of the children on here, but I am wondering if I could get away with posting pictures of the adults.  It’s a challenge.

When we are married

Oscar: ‘Come along mummy.  We are getting married now.’

Me: ‘Are we? That’s nice.  I would like to be married to you. (were it not for certain legal constraints and morally icky things that are too vile to think about.  I am playing along peoples. Just playing along).  Why do we have to get married?’

Oscar: ‘I can’t give you a kiss otherwise and I would like to give you a kiss.’

Me: ‘Why thank you.  That is lovely.’ (which it is)

Oscar: (Clasps my hand and stares fervently into my eyes. The effect being somewhat spoiled by the tomato sauce wreathed around his mouth).  ‘There.  We are married now’. (he kisses me.  It is a bit saucy. In a bad way.)

Me: ‘That’s all very satisfactory.  Now what happens?’

Oscar: ‘Now I shave my beard and look in the mirror and you have to have a shower.’

Me: ‘Okay. Is that what married people do then?’

Oscar: ‘Yes.  And you cannot have a beard.  I am the only one who is allowed to have a beard.’

Me: ‘Can I have a hairy chest?’

Oscar: ‘No. You are a mummy.  Mummy’s are only allowed to have hair on their heads.’ (he smacks me briskly on the head to illustrate the point).

Me: ‘Oh. Well what do we do when you have shaved your beard and I get out of the shower?’

Oscar: ‘We talk about things together.’

Me: ‘I can do that.  What do we talk about?’

Oscar: ‘Cars.  And sometimes trains.  And…..ummmmm….diamonds.’

Me: ‘Thank God for diamonds!’

Katy Dispenses Words of Invaluable Wisdomosity

In my role as a wise, beard stroking, pointy-chinned sage I must concur with the opinion of number one daughter, that Waitrose Belgian Chocolate Yule Log is delicious.  It gets five out of five on my ‘Excellent things about Christmas that don’t make me want to emigrate’ chart.  And a smiley, albeit sticky face.

I must confess that it is a great relief to find a good one, because last year’s offerings were dismal in the extreme.  Waitrose didn’t even offer one, Asda’s were nothing more than a chocolate Swiss roll, all dressed up with nowhere to go, and Sainsbury’s was so chemical tasting that despite it looking lush and inviting it should have come with a Hazmat warning. 

The Casa Corsini Panettone, also from Waitrose is a steal at £5.99 compared to the £16 ones in Carluccio’s.  They are also of a more manageable size.  The ones from Carluccio’s are big enough to feed the five thousand, which is fine if you know five thousand acquaintances with a yen for Panettone.  I, unfortunately, am the only woman in Glenfield who likes it.  Having said that, I still can’t eat one the size of my own head before it becomes inedible, so less is definitely more on the Panettone front.

I will be road testing the chocolate panettone later today.

If there is anything else of a festive nature that you wish me to road test before the big day please write in the comments box and I will try to oblige.

I am willing to undertake this huge sacrifice, even though I may well end up looking like this:

Because I am all about sacrifice and slaving away at the coal face of consumer satisfaction. ahem.

The words, greedy porker, do not ever cross my mind. 

They may cross my belly.

I do however, draw the line at sprouts.  Everyone has their bete noire and sprouts are mine.  Anything that smells like pensioner’s farts is not going into my mouth, and that is final.

p.s. That photo is, you may be relieved to hear, not my normal shape.  It is the shape of a woman two days before her son is evicted from the Big Brother womb.

My normal shape is more like this:

The Date of Doom

How naive am I?

I innocently thought that everyone else would feel about taking their driving test like I do, and that this, coupled with Christmas, early onset Winter type darkness and the relentlessy crappy weather, would mean I could waltz onto the website, book the test, and take it tomorrow if I felt like it.

Ha.

The earliest I can do my test is actually February 4th.  That’s a Thursday by the way.  At 10.14 a.m.  So if you’re hanging around Gypsy Lane in Leicester on that day you might actually want to stay indoors, or worry about the state of your mental health. It’s not a very nice area at all.  And what you’d be doing there on an almost certainly wet Thursday in February if you didn’t work or live there would be baffling in the extreme.

So, it’s booked.

I was very clever. This time I got Jason to do it, so I didn’t have a little mini spazz whilst filling out forms.  Hence no crying.  Just a deep seated sense of shock and ‘bloody sodding hellness’ that has yet to dissipate.

It was £65.  That’s over a pound a minute.  Mind you. They’d have to pay me a hell of a lot more to take someone like me out for an hour, eight hours a day.  They’d have to pay me in Anglo Saxon treasure trove, or a Betty’s hamper the size of Rotherham.  Something excessive and luxe and maybe then not even worth all the aggro.

I’ve also made another decision.  I’m going to go to the doctor and point out that when I went to do my theory test I sweat like a pole cat for several hours and when I sat at the computer, my fingers were trembling so much I had trouble clicking the mouse.  This was inconvenient whilst doing the theory test, but as I was unlikely to crash the office I was driving in, not too problematic.  It will however be a huge problem sitting behind the wheel of a real car.  I want them to prescribe me some backbone, a pound of grit and some good old British pluck that got us through the war.  And possibly some French chalk so that I can grip the steering wheel without my hands sliding off into a giant puddle of perspiration.  I don’t know if that’s possible, but I’d like to try.

They’ll probably tell me to cut my hair and join the army.

Never did me any harm.

Right. I am going to blot out the enormity of what I have just done by failing to study for my essay and instead cutting myself a huge slice of Waitrose Yule Log and watching the episode of Gavin and Stacey I have saved up for just such traumatic occasions.  I am still studying form on Panettone by the way, and have a chocolate one waiting in the wings for testing.  I do think however, that the big guns are needed tonight.  So Yule Log it is.

Tilly says it’s good, but she’s a novice in such matters. Nine Christmases hardly count in the grand scheme of things.  I am training her up, obviously.  I cannot have a child of mine failing in any cake related matters.  The fact that they can’t do quadratic equations or recognise middle C is not half as traumatic as the fact that they might, God forbid, mix up Battenburg and Angel Cake. 

I shall report back.

Santa Baby

I am now stupidly awake.  I think my mind hates my body and vice versa.  I am not a woman in harmony with herself.  If I were I would be snoring so hard the slates would be falling from the roof by now.

As it is I am like a meercat on red alert and my mind is racing.

I have decided to waste valuable studying time by compiling my fantasy christmas list for 2009.  I did something similar last year.  I believe it had Louboutins and art in it.  This year will be spookily similar.

I would just like to point out that I will be getting none of these things.  My actual Christmas list asks for one of Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet Prints as seen on India Knight’s still gorgeous Posterous site.  Jason nearly had a heart attack thinking I wanted them all.  I do, but I am being reasonable settling for one now and the rest later when he becomes insanely rich.  I have also asked for this book called: Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, by Leanne Shapton, which I also saw on India’s site.  And I have asked for a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, which is the only thing not on India’s site, and which I ask for every year without fail.  I cry if I don’t get one.  I love them.  They are Christmas to me.

So this is the list of things I would have if we were bajillionaires:

Emerald Bead necklace from Tiffany

You can see it here.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  I don’t do jewelry usually, but I do love emeralds and I love that this looks so utterly simple, and yet is clearly insanely elegant and fabulous.  It is over £530, 000.  I could buy two of my house for that money.  Even if I had that kind of money to spend on things I would probably have to be sick into a paper bag before and after the purchase.  Then have a lie down.  But goodness me it is beautiful.

The Louboutins

I’m torn this year.  I’m thinking of being greedy and going for three pairs.  Shocking, I know,  but they are so lustworthy.  I’ve narrowed it down to this pair called ‘Miss Clichy’

Which look exactly like all the other pairs I’ve got, but I can tell the difference, believe me.  By pairs I’ve got by the way, I do not mean Louboutins. I do not own, merely covet.

Then there’s these, called ‘Lady Page’

They also come in black, but as I’m doing colour this year and I’ll already have the Miss Clichy, I thought I’d be daring.

Then there’s the boots.  It’s the boots that would win the race if I only had to pick one pair.  They’re called Mamanouk.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Paul Smith bag

I would like a new weekend bag and I love this one called ‘Large Violet’ by Paul Smith:

I adore the stripes. He’s been doing them for years now and I just don’t get bored of them.  They’re just delicious.

John Galliano Things

In the Autumn Winter 09 stuff he has done these crazed Russian doll style outfits which are so voluminous that even normal sized people could wear them.  Which is good, because I am extremely normal sized.  I love pretty much everything Galliano does, but this time around I am particularly enamoured of these gorgeous grey, great coats.  Here is one:

And there is another one in a kind of grey with charcoal check which looks like a Victorian riding habit gone mad.  It’s wonderful.

Antony Gormley Sculptures

We went to the Borders closing down sale today, which by the way, is a gigantic rip off, so please don’t bother.  Their sale prices are higher than their regular prices because they’ve taken away all the three for twos, and buy one get one free, and half price offers.   Anyway, I was drooling over a wonderful book all about Antony Gormley by Richard Noble, which is extremely large, extremely heavy and full of exquisite photographs.  I was going to buy it and then I thought of all the other delicious art books I own (plenty) and which I rarely look at.  I decided it would be much easier to get Antony to pop round and whip me up one of his works for the garden.  It would be fantastic.  I like most of his things, so anything along these lines would be acceptable:

Thanks Santa.