Bewetted, Bothered & Bedraggled

So I took a little walk into town and before I'd got to the top of my ditch, whoosh went the wind and down came the rain and there was me caught without any of my three umbrellas.

NOT HAPPY.

From Bobby Pins to Boi-oing!

So last night I spent some time grumpily attempting to fashion pin curls and trying to stop my hair sticking to my cold cream and thinking bitter thoughts like "So much for effortless vintage glamour" and "I could do with a Downton Abbey-esque lady's maid to do this menial crap for me."

This morning:

Just after taking the pins out

Oh my!

I actually kind of loved it like that and almost kept it, but I wanted to see what the curls would do when I smoothed them out a little.

Hmm, not convinced by that scarf.  Looks a bit like a bandage.  Maybe I'll change it for a green one.  Do go and dig out my green scarf, lady's maid.

So that was the first time I've attempted to curl my short hair.  It works ok at the front where it's longer, but the back bits aren't the best.  There was only enough hair to fit one revolution, so to speak, and they didn't pin very well like that, so instead of 'curls', I've got sort of angular tufty bits.  Ah well.  I'm definitely going to reprise the crazy boi-oi-oing curls some day though!

"Every man I knew went to bed with Gilda... and woke up with me."

So, Rita Hayworth wins the prize for Best Film Hair Ever (for that scene in Gilda, obvs), but I've actually just decided I like her better without her trademark cloud of ginge.

The Happy Thieves has just finished on TCM (I would say "I just finished watching The Happy Thieves", but that would be a bit of a fib, because I tried to pay attention but quickly realised that I didn't have the brain power tonight to follow the plot (something about art thieves... in Spain...somebody dies in a bullfight...somebody gets double-crossed...not even sure if it ended in happily ever after or not...) and just glanced at the pretty pictures for most of the rest of it.)  Anywho, middle-aged Miss Rita has a short curly 'do and is so beautiful it hurts you to look at her.

I've never thought the 'Love Goddess' label suited Rita, really.  In this film her character, Eve, seemed to spend most of the film anxious, nervous, terrified, furious, regretful or just plain drunk, and was completely adorable throughout.  And I loved the Rita and Rex partnership.

"I tell you Jean, she's all woman, when she's a woman, like no other woman, if it wasn't for that malicious streak of femininity."

What do you think - Ginger Love Goddess, or the more dignified look?  I quite like blondie Rita in The Lady from Shanghai as well.  Not so much brunette Margarita in her early film days, though.



Margarita Carmen Cansino

A new look for a new market







Smile, woman!



See, much prettier when you're not trying too hard to be sultry!





Femme Fatale





Also, in the film there was a character with the name 'Blanca', and it's going on my List.

"But, I say, you've never been and bought a newspaper?"

Last week I told you of my woe when I went shopping and felt under-dressed.  This week I was obliged to go out into town IN THE RAIN PAH BOO HISS to find my Mamma a birthday present.  Which was actually the objective of last week’s shopping trip, when three of my sure-fire, certain-to-be-overflowing-with-things-Mum-will-love options let me down and sent me stumbling blindly into the unforgiving glare of the high street in my jeans.  Well, this Saturday I hid my t-shirt and totally non-matching cardigan under my beautiful pink coat and wore boots instead of trainers with my jeans, AND as an added precaution I swerved the cool shops and went to Oxfam, where BOUNTY awaited me.

Is that a zebra over there?  Oh no, it's just me in my new safari dress.

(Hadn't got my face on)
Stripy top and BNWT Warehouse skirt that I think I might actually have on backwards.

That lot AND a birthday card cost me 37p less than the dress I bought last week, which itself was a massivo bargain at £15-reduced-from-£50.  Bargains make me happy, oh dear I’m such a cheapskate.

And I DID find a present for the Mothership, and it wasn’t in Oxfam, only I’m not going to tell you what it was just in case she wasn’t fibbing when she promised to read my blog.  She had that “Yes Zizzy, I AM listening to you relate to me in detail the intricate plot of the dead-people film you watched last night / the G&S play you’re rehearsing for, complete with dramatic re-enactments of your favourite scenes and renditions of the songs with you singing every part, I’m completely riveted, obviously.” look on her face.  Anyway, it was HARD WORK, because when I ask her what she’d like she gives me some non-helpful rubbish like oven gloves or a fridge thermometer, and nothing in the jewellery line is ever going to compete with some bespoke, hand-made, one-of-a-kind piece from my annoyingly clever sister, but I hope she likes it.

Polkaface

One, two, three, hop, see me dance the polka.

Do you think I've maybe got a little bit of a problem?

These trappings, these tatters, these we can just afford

Made it tiny because nobody needs to see how much of a twerp I look when I think it's funny to make faces at the camera.

I look like a bit of a scruff today.  I hate looking like a scruff, don’t you?  Especially when you go shopping.  People seem to dress up to go shopping at the weekends – I see all these teenage girls, free of the school uniform they’ve worn all week, strutting around every Saturday in the head-to-toe Topshop they bought last Saturday.  It just makes you feel like a right urchin when you find yourself in their midst in (very uncharacteristic for me, I might add!) jeans, t-shirt, trainers and no lipstick.  I hate being underdressed.  Hold it!  Conspiracy theory forming!! I reckon the high street chains do it on purpose.  They deliberately spread this anti-scruffpot feeling and sneer at you and make you feel like a worm until you almost scurry away to the nearest charity shop, being the only place you are fit for in your current bag-lady attire, but then the thought occurs to you that if you brave Topshop and the hordes of scornful teeny-boppers around you and buy something, anything, NEW to wear, then maybe next week you’ll be able to show your face in town without shaming yourself by shuffling around looking like a hobo.  They prey on your insecurities and your fear of being noticed for the wrong reasons and exploit it until you fall, helpless, into the merciless jaws of capitalism!  It’s a dirty trick, and I fall for it every single time.  So this is my new dress:

It's appealingly curtainsy

Completely the right time of year to be buying summer dresses, of course, but fortunately I am a whizz at winterifying summer clothes, so:

A bit Von Trapp, but I can live with that.

Arabian Nights?

Following on from the immense success of the 'accidental hooker' outfit last week, yesterday was another one of those times when you throw on clothes, look in the mirror and think "No, of course not, dummy', and then realise you're already late and there's no time to change.

You would think that somebody with as many pairs of red shoes as me would be able to find some in a shade that didn't clash with her top, wouldn't you?

Like my top?  I got it for my 18th birthday back in 2004 and wore it to my birthday party, along with my jingly-jangly charm bracelet belt.  And I bought the cardi in 2007 to tone down a halterneck dress, and my mum brought me back that ribbon necklace from some random country like Latvia several years ago, and my gold bangles came from Oldham market when my friend Rosie wanted to be a Bollywood princess for a party in 2003.  I normally think I'm pretty good at chucking clothes away (A-hem, I do of course mean that I very responsibly donate them to the needy / sell them for maximum profit on ebay), but I was all about the oldies last night!  I actually don't think I've worn my 18th b'day top and belt since I was 18.  It was kind of nice to 'rediscover' them.  (I like to think they were astounded by how much more effortlessly glamorous and sophisticated I am these days ;op)

Pretty sequins!

Here are Theda, Pola (don't you just love those clunky silent-screen-star names?) and Gloria doing Jazz Age Arabian Nights in style, so I can pretend I did it on purpose:

We bloody well should be on the stage

The air is thick with jealousy here in our living room.

Simon and I are watching a programme about how The Pitmen Painters got taken to Broadway, and all the Geordie actors are so excited about setting up the play in New York, and showing the audience their dressing rooms, and the glitzy opening night, and there's clips of the play in rehearsals and in action, and we're both sitting here grinding our teeth because WE WANT TO DO IT.  Gnnhrghpsh.

Boring outfits post

 Here's my fave.  Jeans for Genes day simply does not accommodate people who realise at the very last moment that their only pair of jeans were worn to the beach the previous weekend, are covered in sand and smell a bit funky, thus rendering MINUTES of outfit planning completely wasted, omg fml.



Trusty denim skirt saves the day!



In fact, it's stylish to raise your skirts and bob your hair.

Yesterday, first ponytail since early July.   

Today, snippety-snip!

 



Fur Coat And No Knickers, or, The Perils of Being Overdressed

I didn't mean to go out looking like a cheap hooker, it just sort of happened.

Gosh, I need a haircut.

I wanted to wear the pretty little dress because I'd wanted to wear it over jeans on Jeans for Genes day but had been thwarted by lack of clean jeans, plus I always forget that it's rather scandalously short because the thought process in New Look's changing rooms when I bought it went something along the lines of "Oh, this pretty little dress is a bit scandalously short, I could never wear thi- HOLD ON THIS IS A SIZE 10 AND IT ZIPS UP IF I BREATHE IN BUY IT BUY IT NOW!!!"  So anyway, there I was in my bum-skimming dress and black tights for modesty, thinking that some sensible boots would tone it all down a notch, but my sensible boots are brown not black, and then the dress has little red bows on it and oh suddenly I was wearing shiny plastic shoes with bows on.  And then because I had red feet I needed red lipstick to make it balance.  And THEN I got ready to leave and I didn't put my red jacket on because it's really too shabby to go on much longer, and my red coat wouldn't work because it's way longer than the dress and would just accentuate the floozyishness, so I flung on my fur jacket even though it was still broad daylight and not at all cold enough for a fur coat to be necessary, and THEN I realised I looked like a 1920s tart but it was already too late to change, purse, keys, phone, lipstick, go go go, and that is how I became very overdressed for watching Ruddigore in a church hall amongst staid middle-aged Gilbert and Sullivan fans on a Tuesday night in Monkseaton.

And when I was click-clacking my way to the metro, of course that was the moment when I ran into one of the girls from the year 6 class I was in last year.  "Eee, Missus Heeee-maaaah!  Hiyaaa!"  Cringe.

 P.S. For those of you who are uneducated (Simon), 'Fur Coat and No Knickers' refers to the title of a famous(ish) play and is not a comment on me being a hussy, which I'm not, despite what some people (Simon) would have you believe. 

(Whether I remembered to put knickers on in the bleary haze of 6.30 a.m. that morning is anyone's guess.)

It's a good thing nylons aren't rationed these days.

COLLEAGUE #1: Elizabeth, you've got a ladder in your tights.
COLLEAGUE #2, overhearing on her way to the kettle:  Hah! Elizabeth's always got a ladder in her tights. They're more ladder than tight some days!
COLLEAGUE #3:  Ee, Elizabeth, I hope I get you in the Christmas bran tub.  I know just what you'd be getting!


The moral of the tale, friends, is don't buy your tights in Primark, for they are SHIT.