Queen Catherine enjoys half term

I've got to kill some time, so while I wait here are some photographs of this morning, when I tried to take advantage of the sun and take some portraits of my beautiful bicycle.  (Also pictured, my amazing bicycle-and-handbag co-ordinating skills.)  (Lengthy effort to get me in the picture as well proved disastrous, but nobody wants to see my face anyhow.)

Black, cream and brown Dutch bike:  Capital Cycles

Black, cream and brown handbag:  Primark

Catherine capsized during the taking of these pics, due to the sloping nature of the front garden.  After that we pootled off to the supermarket, but that also turned disastrous when I got to Morrisons and found that my bike lock was still in the flowerbed, post-capsizing.  So we pootled back again, and the front garden was full of ladders and workmen measuring Mrs Upstairs' windows (either that or they were burglars), and I feared they would laugh at me if I just picked up a bike lock out of the grass and cycled away again, so I came inside the house as though I had meant to do that all along, and here I must hide until they go away again.  I hope they buzz off soon, I'm extremely hungry.

The end.

Adventures with a Hippy in the Big Smoke

Roll up!  Roll up!  Step inside the Nickelodeon, sit back and follow the hilarious escapades of Bette and Alexa as they encounter time machines, hippies, sunshine, garlic roasters, talking mushrooms, bargains, pubs and far too much sugar, all in one weekend in London!

Saturday
8.30am - While Alexa sleeps, Bette undertakes the first leg of her looooong journey by walking to the station in the early morning sunshine.
9.30am - Sausage sandwich for brekkie, then on the train!
12.42pm - Bette disembarks from train at King's Cross and is reunited with Alexa.
1.30pm - Picnic in the park.  After years of mocking Alexa, Bette is shocked to encounter an actual barefoot hippy brazenly meandering in the park with no shoes.  Alexa gets cold, so the two retreat to Alexa's house and watch Charade (very good film - Bette on Toast seal of approval!)

7.30pm - A night out at a 1950s party in aid of Japan is planned, and it's time to get dressed!  By amusing coincidence, both girls had picked the same dress to wear.  Despite Bette's protestations that it would be TOTALLY HILARIOUS to turn up in the same frock (It would!  We would look like some sort of nightclub singing sister act!), Alexa is secretly relieved when the zip on her dress refuses to do up and she is forced to find an alternative outfit.

Face-wise, I was trying to go for a youngish Elizabeth Taylor sort of look.  (Yes, I know, in your dreams, Bette!)

Anyway, much fun and frolics were had, breaking out the jive moves, watching a real live Elvis perform, winning handmade ...things... in the raffle, drinking and eating cake.  Brilliant fun.

SUNDAY

9.30am - Bette and Alexa get up and flollop around trying to decide on a plan of action.

1.00pm - Sunday lunch sitting outside a pub in Camden.  Alexa eats all of her vegetarian crap and declares herself so full she can't move.  Bette has eaten most of her chicken and left all the vegetables, and could have fitted in pudding, given half a chance.

2 - 4pm - Shopping.  Alexa only buys clothes if they're ethically-farmed and carbon-neutral and Bette is a massive cheapskate, so they raid every charity shop in Camden.  Bette buys two frocks and two books.  Alexa buys a belt and some shoes.

4.00pm - Alexa is having a lovely time.  Bette is tired and bored and whiny, so they go home.

5 - 7pm - Another Audrey Hepburn DVD. 

Bette is of the opinion that Freddy is a better catch for Eliza than Higgins, on the grounds that he's pretty and he sings.  Alexa disagrees quite violently.

8.00pm - Bette is very excited because they are going to...

The Comedy Store!  To see...

The Comedy Store Players!

(Website here since I am shite at explaining.  It's been an ambition of mine for a couple of years to see the Players, and I wasn't disappointed.  Bloody hilarious, my favourite bit was the long and musical fairytale of Prince Liam and the Talking Mushroom, or maybe the three-headed interview about rugby-playing hyenas, or no, it was definitely the Gilbert and Sullivan bit!  Highly recommended, if you have any way of being in London on a Wednesday or Sunday night, which is obviously a bit of a bugger for me, living far, far away in the distant North and working Monday-Fridays.  I have got the Comedy Store bug now, and intend to make it my quest to come down every school holiday!  I *did* even research what time the last train leaves King's Cross on a Sunday night - reasoning that if I left London at 11pm I could be home and in bed before 3am, and could get in a whole three and a half hours of sleep before my alarm - no problem! Sadly the 11pm Sunday train only goes directly to Edinburgh and probably wouldn't stop to let me off at Newcastle, even if I fluttered my lashes most prettily at the driver.)

I also got to meet up with one of my imaginary-friends-off-the-internet, which was nice too!

ANYWAY.

10.00pm - Bette manages to get over her "OMG I was in the same room as Josie Lawrence and Paul Merton" excitement, and moves on to the next stop of the adventure...

...the Haagen Dazs cafe of Leicester Square!  Whoever came up with this idea was a genius, I tell you.  Bette consumed a scoop of praline and a scoop of dulce de leche with waffles and butterscotch sauce, and Alexa had a medley of different flavours with dark chocolate sauce!

A huge plate of ice cream at 11pm might SEEM like a brilliant idea, but it really isn't.  Bette and Alexa waddled home clutching their bellies and sobbing, and then went to bed.

MONDAY

9.00am - Alexa goes to work, unwisely leaving Bette in charge of her laptop.  Several stolen photographs later, Bette leaves Brixton, hops on a bus and goes to the National Portrait Gallery.

Anna Neagle, painted by McClelland Barclay, 1940.  Move over, Rita Hayworth, I've found my new Best Film Hair Ever.

Next, Bette spent a few hours reading in the park and wandering around the theatre district going "Oooo!", and then got on a train for the bloody long journey back home.

Hello, lovely bridges, I didn't half miss you.

Fabulous weekend.  I hope the rest of my Easter holiday is this good!



A Terrible Tale of Nocturnal Misadventure

WHAT FOLLOWS IS A TRUE STORY.  (The author admits that some elements may have been over-exaggerated sliiightly to enhance dramatic potential, but the basic facts are the truth.)

It was a dark and gloomy night in Newcastle, and our heroine was slumbering peacefully, until a sudden onslaught of noise disturbed her repose.  As the unpalatable cacophony continued, she leapt out of bed and ran to the window in her glamorous pyjamas* to investigate the ruckus.

(*Lies.  The heroine is of course me, and I was in fact wearing a pair of white pyjama pants with a hole in them and a t-shirt that says 'Jesus Hates Tomatoes'.) (And excuse me for breaking the fourth wall here, but Simon, that has just reminded me...  I will do most of the washing up mountain, but there are certain articles that I require you to take care of before you gallivant away for the weekend, otherwise I'm just going to have to put them in the wheelie bin.)  And wheelie bins bring me seamlessly back into my narrative, as you will see if you read on!

Anyway, I can't keep up this storybook register so you're going to have to excuse me lapsing back into my usual slapdash narrative voice for the rest of the tale!  Where was I?  Oh yes, gloomy night, nocturnal misadventure...

So, I woke up and heard a male voice, and peered out of the window, and there stood a man in my garden.  "Simon, what on earth are you doing out there?  This is not a good time to be hanging washing out on the line!", I thought, and as I was thinking it, I noticed that the shadowy figure was not hanging out washing, but was kicking the fence with a good deal of force and aggression, shouting his head off all the while.  "Simon what the fuck?!  Oh my God, he's gone mad, he must have taken something, what do I do, how do I stop him?!"  Now, even in the dim light it should have been clear that this was not Simon, but in my defence I HAD just woken up - in any case, the sleepy fog soon cleared, and I decided that the wisest course of action was to wake up the man of the house and let him deal with the rampaging lunatic in the shrubbery.

I tiptoed to my bedroom door, intending just to stick my head out and see if Simon's bedroom light was on (or if there were any signs of him having some sort of breakdown and going on a destructive bender).  Well, from my bedroom door one can see through into the kitchen, and I now observed our visitor at the kitchen window, engaged in overturning the wheelie bins and making enough noise to raise the dead.  PARALYSED with fear (and also slightly worried that the neighbours would think that we were the ones making all this racket), I scuttled back into bed and texted Simon.

"Are you awake?"
"Just about.  Warum?"

Finally satisfied that the mentalist outside wasn't my (usually) respectable flatmate, I gathered all my courage, dashed past the kitchen and burst into his room.

"Simon Simon there's a man and he's kicking, and the bins, and the back door, did you lock it, and he's shouting, what's going on, DO SOMETHING!!!!!11!1!"

Simon, sausage-rolled in his duvet, gave me one of his "Stupid woman" looks and said that he couldn't hear anything, so it must have stopped now, so there wasn't anything we could do, and I should go back to sleep. ("Go to SLEEP?  At a time like this?!") 

So SIMON went back to sleep, and I returned to my bed and lay there and shook for about fifteen minutes, after which I again heard raised voices, but this time there were car engines and doors and more of a general, chaotic atmosphere.

"Right" thought I.  "I'm going to go and find out exactly what the hell is going on in my quiet, middle-class cul-de-sac."

So I took a deep breath and went and positioned myself at the living room window at the front of the house, from where I could see THREE police cars ("Dear God, this is some sort of Raoul Moat episode isn't it?!") and several policeladies (The Force didn't seem to have sent any policemen to apprehend this violent criminal), who were standing around whilst one policelady bundled a sheepish, scrawny, completely non-terrifying young man into one of the cars.  And then they drove away and then I did go to bed, and maybe tomorrow I'll get around to picking up the poor, abused wheelie bins from under the kitchen window.

THE END.

A Wandering Minstrel I, A Thing Of Shreds and Patches

As you may have noticed, I love to have lots of clothes, but I’m a cheapskate and very rarely buy full-price clothes in 'real shops'.  I dig around for treasures in charity shops occasionally, but mostly I just rely on the charity of others and tend to collect various bargains and cast-offs that my friends and relations generously donate to me.

Today’s Boring Outfit Post is the result of an act of charity on the behalf of my sister, who kindly loaned me this pretty cream lace dress to wear on Christmas Day:

I was a little bit sad when a few weeks ago she blogged about how she was in the process of dying the lace dress purple.

Sadly for Stephanie, the dye only took around the edges of the lace flowers, and turned the dress a wussy lilac instead of the strong purple she was hoping for.  In addition, the outer layer shrunk slightly, making the lining (which had resisted turning purple but had gone a dingy beige) stick out of the bottom.  She didn’t care for the end result and decided to fling the dress my way.  Wahey!  Thanks, Teff!

Dress:  Primark, via ebay, via sister

Purple tights:  Christmas present

Boots:  Second-hand shop

I like the way that the cute little buttons turned pink in the dying process.

And if my badly-dyed, lining-exposing, third-hand dress weren’t shoddy enough by itself, I wore it with the most dilapidated, leaky, liable-to-disintegrate-at-any-moment boots in the world.  Aren’t they a state?

I love them and refuse to get rid until they literally decompose beneath my feet.  AND it’s been bleedin’ cold at school today, so I’ve been shuffling around the corridors with a very student-scumbaggy, non-work-attire hoodie over the top.  Hooray!

Previously on Bette on Toast…

 Just in case anyone was wondering how my catastrophic cake turned out the other day, here is a picture of the finished article:

Shame the birthday girl was too hungover to fully appreciate it, mwahaha!

Birds of a Feather

Last weekend I was in town on the hunt for bargains.  (Where have you been, Hamer? The January sales started on Boxing Day!  There's nothing left!)  I strolled into French Connection, and amongst the £100-reduced-from-£300 embellished party dresses (seriously gorgeous, but as IF) I spied a rack of little khaki shirt-dresses.  The waist ties were all tangled up around the bottom halves of the dresses and they looked a little bit twisted and deformed, but the print was so immensely pretty that I had to have a closer look.

The dresses were £25 (originally £65), which doesn't happen very often in French Connection, and the popular sizes were all still there.  Why on earth hadn't these beautiful dresses been snapped up weeks ago?!  I nabbed a 12, not believing my luck, and took it into the changing room to try on.

You can guess what happened next, can't you?

"Hang on, why has this dress got a gusset?"

It was a bloody playsuit!

So I put it on and took a photo on my phone and texted it to my very fashionable friend Natasha, saying "HELP PLAYSUIT WHAT DO I DO?!?!" and Natasha said "BUY IT!" and I said "BUT PLAYSUIT ARGH!" and Natasha said "BUY ITTTTT!!" so I bought it and took it home and shoved it into my wardrobe and hung my head in shame.

Except, actually, I sort of love it.

In the summertime I'm going to brazenly wear it with Lolita heart sunglasses, green wedgey sandals, the waist belt tied in my hair as a bow, and slender, bronzed legs. (Anyone know where I can buy a pair of those?!)  In the meantime:

Please overlook the fact that my cardigan has got caught up on one side and isn't hanging down evenly like it should be.  Also my tights are navy not black.

Needless to say, going to the loo has been a pain in the arse today!

If playsuits are good enough for Aunt Petunia, I suppose they're good enough for me...!

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.)

The Storming of the Heaton Bastille

So when Simon was on holiday he bought himself a set of three little pictures depicting famous things in Paris in black-and-white and red.  Two of the three are quite nice (although Simon, I've just gone and had a nosy at them and I've decided the Arc de Triomphe one is actually the worst.) but we're in agreement that the third one looks like a cheap postcard:

Eagle-eyed viewers will note that it's hanging on the wall, rather than under Simon's bed where it belongs.  It appeared there in the hall in the dead of night.  Suspicious, eh?  The following morning, while Simon was still snoring, I decided to make a political statement of retaliation to voice my calm and democratic dissent.   I would stick up a picture of my own, and house-proud Simon would just not be able to cope with the combination of a dog-eared postcard, scruffy blue-tack AND dead movie stars!  He'd be sure to take down the Eiffel Tower before you could say "Yes Ziz, you are right."  Foolproof plan, I thought, as I selected a suitable image...

"Oh" said Simon, emerging from his room several hours later.  "Oh.  That looks quite good like that, actually.  I like it."

Bastard.