Media Tart With A Heart (But No Brain)

So. The Media. Gotta love it. And its capitalisation.

I was lucky enough to spend an hour in the audience of Radio 4's Women's Hour last week. I was dead excited- not least because it was a thrill just to see which pashmina Jenni Murray would turn up with strewn casually across her shoulder, like the radio royalty she is. I mean, come on- Jenni Murray. The Murray Monster. Jenz.

On my way in, a PR grabbed me by the arm and said, "I need a gobby student!" I should have said, in no uncertain terms, "Buggar off!" and stomped haughtily to my seat at the insinuation that just because I had been talking to some strangers behind me in the queue I would be 'gobby'. But I didn't. Caught up in the excitement of watching Jenni-bloody-Murray record such an iconic show live had sent me all funny. So instead I went weak at the knees because a fancy PR had chosen ME to be the gobbiest of them all, and so I just sort of looked at her like a dog to owner would. A kind of, "Yes, master?". And she told me I had to talk about politics. That is a bit like having my ex-boyfriend talk about climate change. Uninformed.

When Jenni Murray started interviewing Margaret Beckett (read: very important politics-shaped-person) I had a feeling that something not-quite-right was about to happen. And then I saw the PR point me out to her. And THEN I heard the words, "Yes you! You in the red beret!" and I thought "Shit!" because I had been having a conversation with myself in my imagination about things not-quite-right that might be about to happen and hadn't been listening to the interview.

"What do you think would get young people into politics?" Jenni Murray repeated, her eyes peering over those glasses she has that perch on her nose- one of three pairs, she told us before the show, at which we were all expected to laugh. Why it should be funny that a woman gets so old she goes blind I don't know. Next we'd be laughing at, "... and then, she had to wipe my arse for me!" jokes. But titter we did. She is Jenni Murray. Have I mentioned that?

"Well, urm... I suppose that really it can be difficult to take an interest in politics if you are already very busy, like I am- I'm a student you see, and not one of those that stay in bed until the afternoon either, I work really hard-" I looked pointedly at the PR that had already made three students-are-lazy-and-take-all-our-money jokes before the recording, "-and I think that maybe young people who don't take an interest in politics are just confused because it is hard to wade through all of that rhetoric and unwrap the bow they put on things so, you know, that's what I think would get young people into politics. I think. Probably". Translation? BLAH, BLAH, BLAH etc.

Jenni Murray looked pointedly at the audience, once again over her specs. "I think what the young lady is trying to say is, why not just say what you mean?" Obviously I struggled to do that, so everyone in the audience laughed. At me. Loudly. Bastards. I felt betrayed- Jenni Murray had a cheap pop at my expense. And after I had laughed at her stupid unfunny jokes, too. I don't remember much after that. It was all a bit disappointing.

I got home that evening and, in the haze of the disconcertment of my day, forgot that I'd been interviewed by the local TV news station about Woman's Hour coming to my town. It took me by surprise. As I sat eating reheated spinach tortellini (that reminds me actually- I must share the most hilarious rap written by one of my kids this summer sometime) the newswoman started a segment with, "We've had a very special guest from Radio Four in town today...". I was suddenly prepared for the worst. Forget public humiliation rock-bottom style. I knew before it was even aired that I was beyond the rocks. I knew that I was under the rocks, wrapped in crap with a poop sandwich in my mortified mouth.

It was HORRIBLE. I half-expected a text from mama after it had aired saying something along the lines of, "You went on the telly with your hair like THAT?" I spoke really high-pitched and once again, made absolutely no sense. I talked out of only one side of my mouth. I had twenty-six chins. My blusher was all streaky. I got a text from my cousin after the segment aired: "You're a natural". Sarcastic cow.

So lessons learnt this week? I reckon I'm about as far removed from successful Media Whore as you can get: I'll be pulling up my knickers now.

From Gandhi With Love

Me: Baby Brother, I just don't know what to do with my life. I feel like I need to be a grown-up and start making CAREER choices, and other sensible things. I don't know what to do! Say something nice and make me feel better please x

A message is sent by instant reply.

Baby Brother: Uncertainty is a luxury. Get over yourself. x

Charmed, I'm sure.

Samuel

Samuel was one of the more memorable kids this summer. At lunchtime he would come and sit beside me so that he could stroke the heat rash on my shoulders. He liked the way it felt. He did sound effects to mimmick the bobbles, "DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUD".

The day he found the stubble on my legs was a happy one for him. That was super-duper 'DUDUDUD'. I felt particularly attractive in Samuel's company, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Lost in Translation

Well, it was an adventure. Four months living in Italy- the getting around, the meeting people, the getting out of tricky situations- and, of course, getting into them. My favourite saying is, after all, that famous, 'when in Rome, do the Romans'. Oh, that isn't it? Ooops.

It was a touring teaching job and I lived with Italian families. I do not speak Italian. You work it out. We survived, in general, on broken odd words here and there, a bit of French and lots of those annoyingly redundant hand signals that mean different things to different people and so cause more harm than good. Example: I was trying to explain to one host 'dad' that at school the children were very loud in the classroom. I tugged on my ear to signify 'loud'. Simple enough. Except that I later found out that my gesture means homosexual in Italian, so essentially I had called my class a bunch of little gays. Awkward.

With another family, at dinner one evening, my host 'mother' finished her meal with something very yummy looking in a glass. I asked what it was (by pointing at the glass and then at the Italian menu which, of course, I didn't understand either) and she repeated the same word at me over and over again. A bit like when once, when I was little, my Mama came back from the shops and as I ate my own chocolate bar I asked her what she had brought for herself. 'A secret,' Mama had replied. 'A secret?' I had said. 'Yes, a secret,' she reiterated. I got cross. 'Why is it a secret?' I demanded. 'Not a secret, a Secret,' she laughed and I got madder and madder as Mama said 'secret' over and over again and it took me until I was 21 to figure out that 'Secret' was the name of the chocolate bar and not the cloaked-and-daggered desire of my mother to keep her confectionary choices under wraps from her six year old. Like Dairy Milk can kill, or something. It took until I was 23 to figure out that the bells I heard on Santa's sleigh that same year were actually rattled by Mama outside my bedroom door too, but my therapist says that in time that too will heal. I can't wait to screw up kids of my own.

Anyway. Eventually, after much hand waving and bad French alternatives, my host 'mum' started to hum Tchaikovsky at me, and at some length. Have you ever had somebody sing classical music to you in public? It is EMBARRASSING. Turns out it was a walnut liquer and she was humming 'The Nutcracker'. I don't even like nuts. I had drunk a significant amount that evening, but even without the half-litre of white wine I still would have ended up bent double on the restuarant floor at the ridiculousness with which my cross-culture interactions are laced. Like when I hung out with a cute Italian architect and asked him why he was in the area. 'I burn here,' he told me, and I thought maybe he had come to repent his evil sins at the church or something. Actually, he was saying, 'I BORN here' which changes the nature of his trip entirely. Much less interesting.

Even my communications with fellow English speakers became riddled with problems.

One night, I was sharing a room with an American girl. "I'm afraid you're going to have to share the mirror," I declared to her as she stood applying her mascara at the only looking glass in the room. She spun around. "Afraid?" she said, obviously quite worried. "What are you afraid of? Are you okay? Don't be afraid," she insisted. I sighed. "It's just an expression," I explained. "A polite way of saying shift your arse out of my way". The girl stared at me and looked confused. "Why didn't you just say that? Don't talk in riddles". On the inside I thought, "At least I use the English language properly". On the outside I smiled without showing my teeth. Suddenly, I wanted and needed another Brit with me so that we would be horribly sarcastic and cynical and talk about Les Dennis. I sighed inwardly. Life on the road can be lonely. I don't think the girl was so much American as generally stupid though. I love Americans. I love British sarcasm more.

I think the trip was worth the humiliations and confusions and mental pains though purely for the moment when a seven year old girl ran up to me in a crowded school corridor after a small English language show we had done, totally naked. 'No pantaloni, teacher! NO PANTALONI!' she cried. And for that, I needed no translation.

Watch Yourself

I shouldn't be let loose in public alone. I just shouldn't.

It is a notion that occurred to me when I was at the bank last week. The nice chap looking after me- the obligatory, just-out-of-school, very-bad-skinned, Jesus-why-don't-you-cut-your-nails-for-crying-out-loud new boy with a bad haircut- had just offered me a credit card. Knowing he could see my balance on his screen I laughed at him. Out loud. He stared at me. It dawned on me that he wasn't joking.

"I can't have a credit card," I told him. "I have no self control". "Ah, yes madam," he countered, "But you see with the offer we have today you have 56 days interest free to pay back what you borrow". "Ah, yes," I said back to him, "But you see, I won't pay it back. I'll buy a plane ticket somewhere, draw the rest out as cash, and deal with any consequences later. Or never." The chap narrowed his eyes at me. "I'm just being honest," I explained. "I have no self-control, and that is the first step toward dealing with it. I never have had self-control. I have no inner superego to calm my ID. Boys, chocolate, money... boys... urm, boys again... Can't do it. Can't say no. But I'll say it to you. No". The chap opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Then he re-opened it, took a breath, furrowed his brow and finally said, "That is quite intense". "I know," I told him. "Can I go now?"

I don't know what it is about me that means I am unable to control my inner desires. Literally, as I type this I am waiting for Pizza Hut to deliver a stuffed-crust Margarita that I have justified to myself because I'll read The Guardian cover-to-cover whilst I eat it and only drink fizzy water instead of a Coke. Plus, I have a really bad cold. So bad that I've been one of those people that breathes out of their mouth all week. If I cooked for myself I'd only breathe all over what I made and then re-infect myself, most probably causing death or at the very least mutilation, and I leave for my summer job in two days. I need to be mutilation-free.

Further suspicions of general unsuitability to be out-of-doors unsupervised came with a trip to the doctor. Look, there is no polite way to say this, but it was a check-up after my coil got fitted. Long story short is I WANT SEX BUT I DON'T WANT A BABY. You see? What kind of person blogs that? It is because I am home alone. There isn't anybody to watch me.

"Have you had sex since we put in it?" the doctor asked me. I hesitated. "Yes," I answered. She wasn't going to tell my mother, was she? I didn't dare say anything else as she had her fist in my hee-haw. The upper hand, so to speak. "And will your partner be going to Italy with you this summer?" she asked, referring to my summer job. I peered over my knees at her. "I... I don't have a partner. That is sort of the point of what we're doing here," I said, motioning with my head to the job at hand. I saw what I was saying dawn on her. "Oooooh! You're a slut! You sleep around! Sorry, I see!" she said. Well, actually, she didn't say anything. But she didn't have to. We carried on in awkward silence whilst I pathetically suffered her judgement. As I got up to leave the doctor said, "Maybe you'd like some of these for your trip," and she filled a carrier bag with Durex. I was too embarrassed to say anything. "Plenty of fun in there," she said, and winked.

I was absolutely mortified. She must have given me about 200 condoms. 200! I don't know whether to feel disheartened at her impression of me or enthused that somebody could have that much faith in my pulling prowess. 200! I might not have self control but I most certainly do not need enough rubber to keep a tyre factory in business until the day I have enough inner strength to turn down a family sized bag of Giant Cadbury's Buttons i.e. it'll never, ever, happen. I sort of feel like I've been given some sort of secret mission now, and my prescription will self-destruct after reading. Now I know I cannot be let out in public unaccompanied. At least not until you've locked up your husbands, sons and dogs, anyway. Doctor's orders.

Greener Grass

Life envy- it sucks.

I recently came back from a few days staying with an impossibly gorgeous friend in Paris. Her life comes complete with top-floor apartment, balcony, views, and an absurdly good looking middle-eastern neighbour. She has a Parisienne musician boyfriend with big eyes and floppy hair, whom incidentally she is (understandably) in absolute lust with and paws at like a child with a new (impressively attractive) toy, and a plethora of artist friends with that certain je ne sais quoi that all French artists seem to have. (What with my numerous experiences of French artists and everything, of course I can make sweeping generalisations like that. D'uh.) I mean, old Pablo wasn't much of a looker was he, but he seemed to do alright when it came to keeping the other side of the bed warm. There is just something about a man with a snarl on his lips and a paintbrush in his hand that makes a girl throw herself at his feet and say, 'OKAY! DIP YOUR NUMBER TWO BRUSH IN MY DIRTY WATER-POT RIGHT NOW!' Or something like that. My friend also seems to have seemlessly adapted french flirtation techniques too. By comparision I was the English girl in the bright yellow dress referring to said artist as 'mon petit carnard'... my little duck. I'm working on my chat up lines. I am painfully aware that I do not represent my country particularly well, when my idea of charm is actually insulting to everyone involved. My friend had learnt how to flutter her eyelashes just so. I look like a day-release patient with an eye infection when I flirt.

In the few days I lived her life, I felt fabulous just by association. I got to walk her walk, talk her talk (well, sort of. I can just about ask the direction of the nearest loo and enquire as to the possibility of opening a window)- I even went as far to pose with Paris Vogue in a museum queue, pursing my lips like I had seen a girl on the metro do, just to see if I might pass as a local. God knows what I would have done had anyone actually approached me though. Like I said, I could have either called them a duck or made a beeline for the bog.

I felt even more fabulous when we went out shopping and the tall, lithe sales assistant at the chicest vintage store of the 2nd Arrondissement commented that her favourite dress out of the ones I was trying on was the purple one, if she had to chose. The purple one was the one I had worn into the store. I nodded my head nonchalantly, in the Parisienne way I had come to know and quite love, and waited to jump up and down in celebration until my friend and I had left the store. There is no greater compliment than that of a bobo fashionista to an aspiring one. She probably heard us even two streets away it was that exciting for me. Nil points for coolness on my part, I'm afraid.

My whole experience in Paris was just all so French. I didn't want to come home, and when I did I couldn't help but compare the dreary 80's-style facade of my own very British life quite unfavourably. The painfully British politeness I encountered in my day-to-day life didn't charm me, it irritated me. I wanted the French sneer.

Whilst in Paris I witnessed a capri pant-clad mademoiselle fall over a yummy mummy's designer pushchair whilst I waited for a cafe au lait at a local cafe, and despite it actually being the fault of yummy mummy it was the young woman that got the cold shoulder. Yummy Mummy, or jolie maman if you will, looked her up and down- slowly, from la demoiselle's Italian brushed suede shoes to the honey-coloured and carefully dishevelled hair on her head, shrugged, and said, 'Mais oui'. 'But yes'. And then the demoiselle yelled at her! Loudly! Imagine the scene in Blighty-
Yummy Mummy: 'Oh gosh, I'm so, so sorry, are you okay? That was entirely my fault, I feel so awful!'
Woman: (red-faced) 'Oh no, it was my fault. I'm so, so, so, so sorry'.
Yummy Mummy: 'No, it was me. I'm sorry'.
Woman: 'No. I'm sorry'.
Yummy Mummy: 'Sorry'.
Woman: 'Sorry'.
Yummy Mummy: 'Really. Sorry'.
(repeat to fade)

On coming home I mused on this interaction on the number four bus into town, whereby I ended up sat next to quite a stylish older lady- stylish in a very mature British way, you know the sort: don't hold a match near her otherwise her backcombed bouffant will go up in smoke, shoes-bag-earrings-necklace in deliberate co-ordination, yellowed teeth with an unintentional lipstick smear on, etcetera. She seemed quite well-to-do though, not the sort one normally encounters on the bus. She didn't even smell. I became aware of her when I was on my mobile and she kept looking at me. I thought she was tutting at me for being yet another one of those young people unable to travel any distance without technology glued to their ear. I'd have tutted at me too, were I her. I hung up, and still I felt her looking.

Eventually, she said, 'I do like your coat'. I thanked her. 'I do like to keep up with the trends of you young ones. Stay on the pulse'. She chuckled. I smiled. 'I didn't always used to look like this you know'. I nodded politely. All that avoidance of eye-contact on the metro had made me fearfully reluctant to converse with strangers. 'I used to be able to tell my boobs from my waist from my hips. My belly didn't always rest on my thighs when I sat on a bus'. I laughed in spite of myself because suddenly, right there on there on the 08:40, in the rain, and with the arsehole of the chap in front of me winking, being back home didn't seem so bad. Not with the great British self-depreciation and honesty that comes with a £1.70 bus ticket. I told her she looked fabulous, not a day over twenty-one. And I spent the day feeling great in my fancy coat, too.

Home sweet home. Mais oui.

Gynecology Rules

Being a female of the species is pretty hard going stuff. The trials and tribulations are oft documented in friendly media magazines and newspapers. I've grown up with Girl Power, reading articles weighing up the pros and cons of first date sex, the arguments for and against career over motherhood, why skinny celebrities are the downfall of modern society juxtaposed with double page spreads on how to lose weight now, how to be happy, how to nab the perfect guy, why we don't need men, how to love ourselves, how to identify our flaws. The list goes on. One can digest these issues over the morning coffee and croissant and forget about most of them just as we stumble not only through the front door but through life, too. There is one issue though, that defies media coverage, and that is thus: what to do when one has got a sunburnt vagina.

On typing "I've burnt my vagina" into Google I realise there are a lot of people a lot worse off than I but still, that changes nothing. Nobody wants to be the girl with the burnt vagina. Nor does anybody want to be the person that types 'vagina' into their blogpost more than once. Oh dear.

It started out with good intentions. I'm a young, not altogether unfortunate looking, single lady. Until last week I was also a young, not altogether unfortunate looking, single girl with pubic hair that could be dreadlocked down to the knees and smoke it's own dooby whilst telling hoarse-voiced jokes about the time it fought in 'Nam. So I decided, because these magazine articles tell me that I can take charge of my own body, that it is mine and I can do with it what I will, to get the whole lot taken off. Well that, and the fact that it is supposed to make you feel sexy as hell and I had a date I wanted to *ahem* be prepared for.

The experience was akin only to the time I got a coil fitted, which was like having a cocktail umbrella opened up in my hee-haaw. Ouch. I should have known it would all get quite intense when she told me take off my knickers and didn't give me anything else to put on. By the time she asked me to lay face down and do a 'Swan Lake' I was so afraid of the wax on my nether regions I daren't do anything but agree and part ways. I am now bald, not to mention relived that it is over. The feeling sexy thing? That just seems like a bonus now. I'm just glad I made it out of there alive. When somebody asks you to pull your clitoris in one direction and dangle your leg off a raised bed in other, you know it is a situation that will not end happily if one of you has muslin strips and rubber gloves on.

What I didn't fully appreciate, however, was that minus such a big part of myself was to be a concern after a session in a tancab. I'm not a tanorexic, don't get me wrong, but of late I have taken to eight minutes twice a week to get my skin used the sun it will be subjected to for nine hours a day, seven days a week come the summer and my stint working in Italy. Yes it is bad for you and and Daily Mail readers out there will be tutting and shaking their heads as I type but as with sex I practice safe tanning so lecture me not, says I. Thank you for your understanding.

Several hours after stripping off for a bit of vitamin D I realised I felt slightly... uncomfortable. Things were throbbing slightly. I felt warm. I couldn't sit down properly unless it was just so. And then it dawned on me. I had burnt my vagina in the tancab. For anyone whom did not get that the first time, I HAD BURNT MY VAGINA IN THE TANCAB. Holy jesus. I had burnt THAT, and THERE.

The only advice I have been able to muster is that lime juice hurts. I do not know this from personal experience- I may have been stupid enough to burn my vagina but even I know that is a bad idea. Isn't it...? I don't much fancy cucumber for relief, as the connotations of that go far beyond what I am prepared to do and I like to eat natural yoghurt, not bathe in it. I suspect this is something that I am going to have to just sit out. Pun intended. Pardon me then whilst I go find a cold compress, and a place to bury my head for the rest of eternity. Burning my vagina. I may as well surrender to my stupidity now. Oh wait- I think I already did that.

One Plus None

I recently got dumped (my mother is very proud she raised a winner). In turn, this also means that by default I became single. This bothers me, because at no point was I aware that I was ever a 'double'.

Admittedly, I am often too much for some- I'll go straight to your head and make you declare your love for the whole wide world before you throw up on your new 'shag me' shoes and pass out in the loo- but to quantify myself like a drinks measure hardly seems fair. I might start referring to myself as a split mixer or lager top, as in 'SWF w. GSOH WTLM three quarters of a chilled Kronenberg pint whom desires nothing more than a squirt of lemonade to take them to the required legal serving as dictated by our great Queen under her Majesty's weights and measures act of 1963'. Bit catchier than just my name, isn't it?

Hand-in-hand with newfound singledom (*groan*) is several instances of bizarre, teenage-like behaviour that I fear may just be the beginnings of my becoming a cliche. I really hate being a cliche- it puts a right bee in my bonnet. Especially as I thought I was the apple of his eye, the best thing since sliced bread. In the end it was as clear as mud though, cut and dried, and I cried buckets. I'm sure though, that in the end, everything will come up roses.

In the initial instance I did what any self respecting young woman would do and got drunk with my Nanna on cheap white wine and cried at Coronation Street. I chained smoked cigarettes at the back of her granny-flat and refused to eat anything because people who get dumped also get really thin, don't they? I was bloody starving after a day and a half. I went for a run (waddle) in an attempt to help the process along. That was a week ago and I've passed the time by eating whatever I can find because, after all, I went running six days ago.

I single-handedly pulled the country out of recession by spending too much of money I really don't have on dresses that are so far removed from what I would normally wear that even I- in stage two of my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder- was shocked. An orange dress with blue tights, anyone? White sunglasses? Pleather?

And I also did something that I'm really not proud of.

I got stoned.

This is so not me, but I think that was sort of the point. I hated it. I spent thirty-five minutes with my forehead on the ground repeatedly saying, "I don't like this... No, I really don't like this..." before finding solace on my friends tiled bathroom floor and thinking how wonderfully symmetrical his ceiling was, and how his voice was as smooth as a Galaxy Caramel. It made me really want a Galaxy Caramel. I also stared a lot. I was fascinated with how people's mouths moved. I stared at the floor of the bus quite intently on the way home too, and helped myself to two yoghurts, a packet of custard creams and a foot-long cold apple studle when I got home. I am so embarassed that I ever thought it might have been a good idea. The housemates keep leaving piles of grass on my placemat at dinner to remind how stupid I was, the buggars.

I was told that you can't get over a man until you get under another so I signed up to a dating site online. I ended my subscription after two days when some guy I 'winked' at emailed to say that it was nothing personal but he could never date a vegetarian. Another one bites the dust.

There is not enough fatty food in the world to have me admit to Facebook stalking, re-reading old text messages or desperate attempts to be friends with ill-planned phone calls that my mum shouted at me for. So I won't. But what I will say is this. Vodka-Tonic anyone? We can go for a run afterward.

Social Exposure

This week my hairdresser told me I have hair like Jennifer Aniston. I also met my literary hero Alexander McCall Smith. He didn't pass comment on my hair. I think I prefer my hairdresser- mainly because I retained some element of dignity in the time I spent in her company. I did not, it has to be said, retain any semblance of anything even remotely like dignity in the time I spent in his.

I didn't mean to be a plonker, but the only memory I can fathom from meeting Sandy (as, apparently, his friends call him) is shaking his very large hand, and then bursting shamelessly into sobbing tears leaving my brother to mutter something about the lovely cucumber sandwiches at the afternoon tea we'd just indulged in as he slyly captured the moment on film. I'd been doing so well, too, having refrained from pinching the extra cakes left on the table after his reading. I'd thought about it- I always carry a big handbag with me. I could have had a bonafide feast on the way home.

What I had meant to say to Sandy after queuing to get my copy of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency signed was, "You have inspired me. Your books have helped me. One day, I hope to be able to write in such a way that means I too can help people escape through fiction. Your simplicity, your humour, the kind and generous way you have with words- it has all influenced the very core of my being in an unfathomably deep, thorough way."

I meant to say, "Your character Mma Ramotswe told me, when I was just an eighteen year old young girl trying to make her way in the world, that you can think and think and think but sometimes you have just got to eat your pumpkin. I try to remember that when things get tough. I like to eat things."

I meant to say, "Mr McCall Smith, thank you for the hours of escapism your novels have provided me with. Thank you for helping me see the world in a more forgiving light".

I would rather imagine that a chap referred to by his friends as 'Mythers' loudly and drunkenly sharing my train carriage on the way home would like to thank Mr McCall Smith too, if only through association. Feeling liberated by our meeting, if not a little embarrassed, my inner cup of goodwill overflowed and on listening to 'Mythers' get a bit of a ribbing from his friends about his desire not to go out and plunge further into oblivion with his friends, but go home to his girlfriend ("You're under the thumb mate!", "Don't let a bird tell you what to do!", "Balls to it, stop being so boring!" etc). The banter went on from their alight in York, where I bollocked them for being noisy in the quiet carriage (it had been a long day) all the way to sodding Sheffield. In the end, I felt so sorry for the poor lad that as I got off the train I took him to one side and whispered in his ear, "Listen love, you do whatever it is you feel like doing. Your mate in the glasses doesn't know what he's talking about". I walked away feeling quite smug, spreading the love like that. It didn't even bother me that 'Mythers' looked at me like I was on day release and then stuck his finger up at me as my fabulous hair and I departed.

So I will take the compliment from my hairdresser, and put the Alexander McCall Smith episode to the back of my mind. After all, I'm Worth It- just.

Growing Pains

"So let me get this straight," S said to me. "You are applying for a job in Italy?"

I grinned proudly. "Yes".

"To live with Italians?"

"Yes".

"And work with Italians?"

"Yes".

"But you don't speak Italian?"

"...No". I bowed my head in mock-shame and my housemate laughed. "That is so typically you," she told me. "No plan, just fingers crossed". If I didn't suffer from high self esteem I may have been upset by that.

I seem to be a constant source of amusement to my housemates, who take my custard experiments (sweet scrambled eggs), dress sense ("Bloody hell! You look like Felicity Kendal on speed!) and student status (I sleep a lot) all in good nature, sprinkled with only a hint of sarcasm and a barely visible solemn shake of the head as I tuck into my veggie burger whilst they eat Spaghetti Puttanesca or similar. "You are so bloody weird that you're a veggie who doesn't even eat vegetables!" is a common derisment . I am also a student who lives in a house with a hot tub, but let's not get into that.

I do have a theory, though. I reckon there are two types of people in this world: Those that get their five-a-day, and those who sometimes cannot even manage to catch the number four bus on time. I suspect I might fall into the latter category, with any doubt being removed by a quick glance down to the white stain on my jumper where I spilled my lunch. On reflection, actually, the only thing I managed to say to S yesterday was as I ran down the stairs and out of the door shouting wildly something about, 'Guess which gal overslept and is runnnnnning......' She probably didn't hear the rest. Similarly, a few days before that they had my burst through the door to grab The Boyfriend's wallet. "I thought you were paying for supper?" B said to me. "I am," I replied to him. "But The Boyfriend needs to lend me fifty quid first".

You really do have to be a grown-up to eat five whole portions of fruit and veg everyday, don't you? And to get up before 9 am on a weekday (okay, okay... noon). And to have a pad by the telephone for messages. You have to be a grown up for things like houseplants and a filing system and fresh bread and extra loo roll under the sink and to have the nerve to tell the man at Starbucks that he hasn't made your tall non-fat, soy, vanilla latte with no froth hot enough. I don't even like coffee.

There are some things that make me feel like a grown-up. At the 'pick n mix' counter in the cinema I often feel like a grown up purely because there is no longer anybody looking over my shoulder saying, "I think that is enough, don't you?" My last purchase at the cinema came to £8.38 when it was put on the scales and do you know what? I didn't care. Obviously the fact that I threw up when I got home is beside the point.

If I manage to catch the bus, I feel like a grown up when I offer my seat to somebody old or with a pram. A sense of nobility makes me sit a little taller, and I love knowing that because of my altruism I am better than everybody else. That same sense of superiority also commeth over me when I wash my bed linen- well, that one time I did, anyway. Remembering to put on a wash before having to resort to cotton Marks and Spencer granny pants is always an achievement, as is knowing it is time to go to bed. That feeling of relief when you know your 02 bill is due to come out your overdraft and you've actually got the cash to pay it on time this month is almost enough to make one feel like actually becoming a grown-up. But once glance at the dead basil plant on my windowsill is enough to make me change my mind. I do think growing up is overrated- as is eating all that veg, too.