Rule Britannia, marmalade and jam…
I have been on holiday. I have travelled to foreign climes and I have returned rested. Or rather I have returned from visiting my parents in old blighty and I am knackered. I have over a thousand items in reader to go through and and a tonne of stuff that I’ve bought that I need to sort through as well. (Or at least I did when I typed this, as I am late in posting…)
I am currently sat in Manchester Airport, terminal one as my glorious hunter gatherer goes about stalking through the wilds of duty free to return with stuff that normally none of us would buy as gifts for people we forgot to buy gifts for. We had the hilarity of getting Yorkshire Tea bags through security and in combination with a HDD, cables and a yorkshire tea cake didn’t really go down too well. Good job everyone involved were in good spirits and we could laugh about the whole thing…!
The time away was fantastic. Limited use of mobile phones, fairly poor Internet connection thanks to ridiculously thick walls in the house and peace and quiet. It was everything that both of us needed! Two aquariums, a bridge bigger than the Golden Gate in every way, two armouries, a castle, museum, climbed a tower, sat in a Shinkansen and stuck our heads into a 3,300bhp diesel rotary engine and drove through the great Yorkshire forest. It was a good week!
I was somewhat reluctant to leave home only because it is very easy to get back into the swing of things but I am looking forward to coming back to Ireland.
***
And now I am back here in Ireland, back at work and getting used to monotonous routine once again. There are photos, and they are on Facebook and I’ll put them on to Flickr just as soon as I can (and by that I mean as soon as I remember too)… The flight was a bit of a pain, that wasn’t helped by my need to be at any airport ridiculously early. We sat in a comfy Starbucks with a view until at least twenty past ten that night. Before discovering that our flight was full of Liverpool supporters who were too tired or too drunk to really do anything obnoxious! I hit the pillow and was out like a light and I had three more days off work before starting. Poor old Jonathan had to go straight in to work with his 0530 start!
I’m off next Wednesday but I’m at work until then (through the weekend) then finally I get my weekends back! Late shift and weekends again, looking forward to it…! Nothing planned other than a trip to the farm and a trip up to Dublin with friends and family. No more holidays in the works, but there is talk of going back to York but with a car rather than flying towards the end of summer.
Any hoodle I shall leave it at that and I’ll be back with photos hopefully! Have a good one guys and talk to you all soon.
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Falling on your face with pleasure
This weekend I scratched a bull on the back with a wire brush so much he almost fell on his face with pleasure. I could spend hours grooming horses so it’s no wonder that Dougal, the herd bull and me were having fun as I leaned over the fence to give him a good scratch. (Remember, up and over, not through and under – If he bucks he’ll crush your hand on the bar. See, I’m learning things!) It was like scratching a really large dog behind the ear, only you really don’t want Dougal sitting in your lap. He’d probably kill you.
I really have nothing much to write about today. I’ve not seen anything that has inspired me to put the world to rights so I’m probably going to make this more of a life update rather than a full on rant about something.
This week is the bathroom-painting week. We started painting the bathroom only really to use up paint but now it looks a bit rubbish. Then on my day off I’ll get some bathroom emulsion so the paint won’t actually run down the wall when the shower is on. The lino also needs replacing but then it is only a rental and our agents are pretty useless.
I am really excited though; I’m only a few weeks (about four!) away from going home to the UK for a holiday. We’re flying and hiring a car over there. It should be a Ford Focus. If it is, brilliant because I’ll get a nice prolonged test drive of a car I am really interested in. If not then worst case scenario it’s an Astra. A car I’m not really interested in. It also begs the question of whether we need to burn CD’s or bring an AUX jack for our iPods. I’ll bring both just incase.
The trip home also means tattoo time and piercing time. I should be looking at getting the one on my stomach finished/improved but I am tempted with getting another shoulder piece started. I should finish what I’ve started though (oh wow, this keeps cropping up!). I’ve lost some weight, my stomach is at least a little leaner than it was this time last year so the stomach work should be easy enough to finish. I should contact Steve, the lad that did the awesome back piece work for me at Scorpio Tattoo in Selby and see what we can get done! It’d be nice to get that piece tidied up and at least a little more presentable than it is.
Piercing isn’t going to be too adventurous. I’ll never get anything other than my ears done so it’s only going to be a fourth set in my lobes/cartilage sorted. And I desperately want something other than BCRs in them so I’ll probably change them up for some bars rather than rings. Again, this is all something I’ll decide closer to my trip over. I might chicken out of the piercing if I’m getting my tattoo sorted out.
Other news includes the arrival of something special in my life. My new found love (sorry darling). My iPad. I am a child of Apple I’ll admit. I am slowly being absorbed into the cult but I just love the products and their complete usability. My iMac, my MacBook Pro, Time Machine and my iPhone have a new friend. At the moment though I just use it for reading books and comics (currently reading Transmetropolitan, brilliant stuff) but I have it hooked up to GarageBand too and have a few music apps going so I can start messing around creating some noise. As well as the iWork applications for any ideas I have to type up. Which I can then sync to my MobileMe iDisk and Drop Box! And I have a rather fantastic red leather case for it.
Other, less than awesome news, I had an ultrasound on Friday last week for something my doctor said didn’t “look right”. What was meant to be a pelvic ultrasound turned into a kidney and abdominal one too and I have to wait until at least Wednesday to find out the results and I have about a month for another set of results to come through. To say I’m wound tight is an understatement but everything will be OK, there’s no need to worry and I’ll just be another person in a long list of “just incase”.
Until then I’ll continue as normal and get back to this idea I had for my story that came to me in a dream one night last week. I shall leave you with another photo of me bundled into the back of a tractor.
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Fashion and a sense of style…
Wear what you want to wear. Be comfortable and confident and be about your way. There, that’s the end of this blog post. Or is it? People will keep saying to me that they don’t care for fashion, that they don’t buy clothes based on choices made by the big fashion houses out there (dare I make you aware of the fantastic monologue Miranda Priestly has in Devil Wears Prada? It’s at the end of this post…). Then in their next breath they ask me what do I think will suit them? I will always tell people to be comfortable first because with comfort comes confidence, and if you have confidence then you can wear anything. I generally don’t answer because people get terribly defensive when you tell them that they’re not wearing what suits them already. They think that by asking the question about what suits them means you’ll answer with “you’re fine!” and then when you say “actually, this is what you’re doing wrong.” they’re shocked. If you ask, expect an answer. And to all of you – here’s mine.
“What suits me?” is a big question, because it encompasses so much. If you have wide shoulders, a cleavage but a short neck then you want a wide necked top, or a slash necked top, something that shows your cleavage. Coupled with a drop throat necklace (gives them the illusion of a longer neck). Not a strappy top as that will then make your shoulders bigger and more slumped and the idea here is to make everything in proportion to everything else.
If you have short legs, large thighs and big hips you would be better wearing straight cut jeans or trousers and making them high waisted (not hip cut jeans). This will make your legs longer, detract away from the big thighs and balance your hips.
Gok Wan and his other compatriots all talk about body shape. Once you get that, once you understand that, then you know exactly what part of the clothes store you should be looking in. This is not about being fat or thin, or size 8 or size 16. This is about know what you can and can’t wear. Even down to the classic t-shirt and jeans combo.
Ignore the models on the high fashion catwalks. People forget that these aren’t clothing statements, they’re not “you must look like this!”. No, these models are living manikins, and they are there to display the colour boards and inspiration boards of the designers for the coming season. These fashion shows set the precedent for the new season of colours and styles for the high street stores and the fashion stores. A designer will show a collection around the colour pink, or a military style for example. These are then worked into styles and collections available at Top Shop and New Look etc. These models can wear anything because that’s what they’re there for.
If you want to be ahead of the game, merely look at what is presented at the big shows such as London, Paris and New York. Look at the colours, the styles and the cuts of the clothes. That year you will then see the same in the high street stores to a lesser level.
I wear boot cut trousers, with a high waist, skinny trousers with a high waist and straight legged trousers with high waists. I love my legs, the high waist means my legs aren’t cut off at my hips (and besides no one likes a muffin top) and makes them look longer. The boot cuts bring out my thighs, the straight cut means I can make more of my bum and the skinny means my whole leg can be shown off. Skinny jeans are good for wearing boots with, however be careful not to make your legs stumpy by cutting them off at the knee with boots. It’ll also make you wider in the middle because skinny jeans will bring the eyes in at the bottom. Making you top heavy.
Dressing well is all about knowing how optical illusions work.
But it’s not all about cut, it’s also about colour. This I haven’t quite got the hang of. I know what suits me but I don’t know why. Again, colour can have an impact on where the eye is drawn, black does slim you a bit but again won’t work on certain skin tones (and there are different shades of black). Colour from makeup to hair to clothes all have an impact on style and then on confidence.
So if you have the ability to wear clothes to suit you but then get a hair cut that doesn’t compliment your face shape or neck line then what’s the point? Likewise what’s the point of a hair cut when you have the colour wrong? Then on top of hair cut and colour, clothes style and colour you then have shoes and accessories. Certain heels and boots work better on certain people and with certain clothes. Certain earings compliment clothes and body shape. I need to wear necklaces with shorter chains because I have a long neck, any long chains will make my neck longer. Even the difference between wearing stud earings, hoops and dangly earings have an impact on an over all look.
The big thing here is knowing what you like and then knowing what suits you. So you might see someone with red hair, doesn’t mean it will suit you. And you might see someone with a short layered bob, but it doesn’t mean it will suit you. Curly hair versus straight hair. A wild and wacky colour compared to a more sensible natural colour. It all adds up and one mistake in a ‘look’ can really stick out.
But again, who really cares what other people think? 
Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select… I don’t know… that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent… wasn’t it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.
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