As a country girl still a long way from having an [...]]]> I’ve been reading Vogue magazine on and off since I was thirteen. As a teenager I found it a colourful counterpoint to the grungy glamour of the music rags I also subscribed to. I loved the glitz, the expense, the ridiculousness of the outfits.

As a country girl still a long way from having an real sense of myself I found solace in reading about and gazing at pictures of the different potential role models within its pages. Did I want to be an all-American Calvin Klein girl with sunkissed hair and spotless white chinos? How about an edgy aristocrat permanently perched on a horse? A rock chic in acid green underwear and a string of aquamarine beads? I cut out whole fashion spreads, some of which I still have. The one that sticks in my mind is from about 1994; a fierce model with strawberry blonde hair somewhere in the American midwest wearing a dazzling array of dresses, cowboy boots and feather headdresses. For me she embodied the spirit I wanted to grow into: fearless, exciting, independent – happy. Unusually for a Vogue spread this model radiated a carefree joy. In one picture you see just her face. Her eyes are closed as the sun beats down on her. She is chewing the end of a corn stalk, just as I used to on my solitary walks. I see the irony of this now. What I saw as a distant unattainable attitude at the age of 16 was something I was in fact embodying right then and there. I was carefree and happy. I had hours to stalk the countryside, gathering armfuls of grasses, artfully tearing my charity shop clothes as I planned my ‘escape’ to the real world.

Not that long ago, in a fit of nostalgia perhaps, I took out a subscription to Vogue. At first I looked forward to it dropping through my letterbox, but now I find even just flicking through it something of a challenge.

What strikes me now, as a woman in my thirties, is the obsession with youth. It must have been the same back then, but of course I was too young to notice. Now I find myself alienated by the young girls and ‘men’ draped with clothes I can still no longer afford. Not that I want to see plump, aged models as I flip through its pages, but I want to know what these styles might look like on someone of my age – not a girl who’s barely started menstruating.

And there’s the concomitant obsession with the offspring of the rich and famous. The Le Bons, the Geldofs, the Lennons, Woods, and the rest. These children have their parents’ incredible genes, and damn do they look good in their cast offs, but I’ve yet to see one who exudes any of the charisma of their mother or father. And yet still Vogue ogles them, interviews them, photographs them. I find it nepotistic and vampiric. Where is the new? Where is the original?

Perhaps I have lost the joy of ‘dressing up’. Never have I worn less makeup, flatter shoes, more comfortable clothes. I like to be able to sleep in and then run in comfort to the tube station rather than rise early to draw on complicated eyeliner and then totter down the road on six-inch heels. Years of being a woman have taught me just how much effort goes into looking ‘effortless’. Now when I look at those eager women who open up their wardrobes and their houses to the Vogue photographer I see, not potential role models, but rather desperate control freaks who sublimate their sex drive through shopping.

I still like fashion. I like its ‘fuck you’ attitude and defiance in the face of dullness. I love the attention to detail and the genuine artistry that goes into couture. I even like the fact that I’ll never afford a designer dress, and that I wouldn’t buy one if I could. Vogue is a fantasy world, like a comic book or an illustrated children’s novel. The trouble, I suppose, is that I’m not a child anymore.

Happy Christmas, Everyone!

I’ve kept a handwritten diary since I was 18. I am now on something like the 22nd volume of said diary. It is the place where I [...]]]> Just wrote a message to @squozed about my real diary that no one ever sees. Then I remembered a story someone told me last year that still amuses me.

I’ve kept a handwritten diary since I was 18. I am now on something like the 22nd volume of said diary. It is the place where I record all the things I can’t blog about or talk about with friends, and that has amounted to quite a lot of stuff over the years as I’m a secretive creature by nature. A lot of it tends to be about love affairs, naturally, but I also use it to express emotions that I don’t want to foist onto long-suffering friends and family. It’s also a space for me to find out how I feel about things, as oftentimes I don’t know how I feel until I’ve explored events through writing. In other words, it’s a safe space, and it’s safe precisely because no one else is meant to read it.

I’m normally extremely careful about my diaries. I try not to leave them lying around, and I have gone to quite extraordinary lengths to hide them. Not so long ago I was living with a friend who I just knew was likely to go nosing around in my stuff to see what he could find (this means you, Rufus). As a result, I used to hide my diary every time I went out. Either that or I’d take it out with me. When I was dating the world’s most jealous man in 2001-2002, I basically stopped keeping a diary at all, as I knew he’d find it and I knew I would pay for its existence big style. I still regret that, as I have basically no record of an entire year spent in Shanghai. On the plus side though, I still have all my fingernails.

Despite this caution, I have, at times, become a little more relaxed about my diary. If I live in a place where my housemates don’t seem overly nosey, I might leave it out on my nightstand or on my desk now and then. I guess this is what happened when I was living in London in 2005, but it still doesn’t quite account for the events that were recounted to me by a person I shall name ‘X’.

At a party last Christmas, X got rather drunk and told me a story about his brother, whom I shall name ‘Y’. Y and me were housemates in 2005, until certain rather traumatic events in Y’s life meant we both had to move out of the house. Y decided he didn’t like me much and we never saw each other again, although I stayed friends with X and continued to see him regularly over the years. The story as told to me by X was that, at some point during the turmoil surrounding me moving out of our shared house, Y found and read my diary. According to X, the contents of my diary were so offensive to Y that he (a) showed them to his father (whom I shall name ‘D’) and that (b) Y and D then burnt my diary on a small bonfire, which may or may not have also contained some components of small animals.

At this point I was looking at X with a look of absolute horror and blank incomprehension on my face (a hard look to pull off I can promise you). The idea of anyone reading my diary naturally upsets me, but as far as I was aware I’d never lost one, and more to the point, I wasn’t aware that I’d ever written much if anything about Y, as he didn’t figure a great deal in my thoughts at the time. ‘What’, I enquired of X, ‘was so shocking that Y felt compelled to burn my book?’ X looked at me shiftily. Apparently, the most offensive passage was one in which I had made a series of comparisons between X, Y and X and Y’s brother, (whom I shall naturally label ‘Z’). In this comparison, Y fared rather badly against X and Z, which may or may not have been the source of the rage. At this point I started laughing. Yes, I did have a bit of a thing with Z briefly, but I certainly couldn’t recall drawing up a comparative table. On the other hand, my memory is as leaky as a sieve, so I conceded that it might be possible that I’d written a paragraph or two on the subject.

The story, such as it was, ended there, and I was left feeling a confusing mix of emotions, including embarrassment, intrigue, irritation and amusement. When I next visited the secret countryside bunker where I lock away my old diaries, the first thing I did was to search for 2005 volumes. As I suspected, none were missing. What’s more, a thorough inspection revealed no incriminating passages about X, Y or Z (and no ripped out pages either). In fact, I was much more concerned with another character entirely at that time. I shan’t assign him a letter as this is already getting too confusing.

So now I am left wondering just what the source of that story was. As the old saying goes, there’s no smoke without fire (or perhaps no fire without scandalous words). X didn’t just make up the story, as I’ve since had it confirmed from other sources. Whatever he found wasn’t a diary, but I’m not in the habit of scribbling thoughts down anywhere else, so I’m at a bit of a loss to explain what it was Y and D read/burnt.

In a way though, it doesn’t matter, and I sort of don’t want to find out the real story. I have zero sympathy for those who go nosing around in my private affairs only to find something they don’t like. Plus, if I ever had any doubts about the incendiary quality of my diaries, those have now been throughly laid to rest.

Keith, or is it Billy?

Billy, or is it Keith?

P.S. I can’t wait to see this.

1. I’m a raucous drunk.2. I used to kill rabbits with myxomatosis on the way home from school, until I misjudged a blow [...]]]> I’ve been tagged by the Hank Moody of magical realism, the wondrous, intellectual, sexbeast Don Felipe (is that enough ass kissing for you, my little pretty?) to write six random things about me.

1. I’m a raucous drunk.
2. I used to kill rabbits with myxomatosis on the way home from school, until I misjudged a blow and made one scream (you do not want to hear a rabbit scream).
3. My favourite character in Twin Peaks is Albert Rosenfield, because of this quote:

“You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a nay-sayer and hatchet man in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take another, because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. I love you, Sheriff Truman.”

4. Princess Diana once scowled at me and then looked away. I was five. (Princess of Hearts, my arse.)
5. I know for certain that God has a sense of humour.

I am tagging Kel D.