Blimey, it's been a long day.
From 11am to 7.30pm, I have mostly been in a state of undress. Not in the street you understand - I haven't yet taken to roaming the town in just my undercrackers. But today has been the latest Mini Event in the series of Mini Events that build up to the Big Event of 2010. My Sister's Wedding.
Yes, today was the latest phase in The Hunt For The Bridesmaid's Dress and it was a knackering one. Having rootled through the limited retail offer of my own home town and my sister's home of Hicksville, UK, we decided that a trip into London was the next sensible move. Surely, we reasoned, we would find something suitable in the teeming metropolis that is our capital city. With six trillion shops, at least a third of which seem to be branches of Coast, something acceptable was sure to rear its chiffon-smothered head.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But no. After eight hours of almost non-stop rack rifling, zipping up, zipping down, hoisting, wriggling and doing that thing of holding a dress up against yourself and trying to stare it into being longer, shorter, nicer or a better fit, this damn dress is still eluding us.
It was fun enough though, as I am never averse to a bit of dressing up, plus we tried on a few bits of ludicrous upper class headgear and spent a few thousand Dream Pounds between us in Christian Louboutin. Honestly, I can't say I've ever wanted to lick a pair of shoes before, but that shop could turn a girl's head. I really hope the Devil doesn't decide to tempt me one day when I'm out walking the moor with my other half - all he'd have to do is wave a pair of Louboutin's classic black pumps at me and I'd be claiming single person's council tax discount before the day's end.
The problem we had was two-fold - my sister's pickiness and my pickiness. My sister has chosen an incredibly expensive and proportionately beautiful wedding dress, but it is of a very singular appearance which cannot be accessorized by just any old frock. Her bridesmaid needs to be wearing a dress that is just as ruched, ruffled and frue-frued as hers, or at least boasting complementary features. Also, she set her heart on a particular colour scheme some time ago, but the two elements just refuse to make love and spawn the perfect dress.
Add to this the fact that I hate wearing above-the-knee garments and the field of possible candidates is narrowed even further. I should stress that this is not just me being contrary, this is a public health notice, as my knees should not be exposed under any circumstances. They look as if they've been borrowed from Big Bird, broken a few times and then stuffed with handfuls of boiled rice for good measure. Also, I am completely unable to pull off the short, puffy, cutesy dresses that are all the rage these days. You need to be tall, svelte and sylph-like to wear those things and unfortunately I tick none of those boxes.
I have an hourglass figure. It took me many years to accept that, as all I wanted was to be waif-like, straight up and down just like the models. I didn't want a bum and hips, I wanted a figure like Rachel from Friends. I wanted to disappear behind lampposts and slip down cattle grids. It took a very long time for me to accept that I was more a figure of eight than a number one, but I finally have accepted it. And what's more, I embrace it. Sadly I don't have big enough funbags to complete the look totally, but I know that dresses of a certain shape flatter me far more than floaty, puffy numbers. Being short and stumpy, I know that long, Grecian-style dresses swamp me, while prom dresses with massive skirts make me look like a sack of turnips wrapped in taffeta.
The best thing for my figure are tailored, fitted dresses that finish on the knee, or those slinky, fishtail gowns as worn by 30s starlets. And that's perfectly fine by me, as I love those looks and I'm very much hoping to land an outfit like that for the wedding. But sadly, it looks like my sister's dress - you know, the unimportant one - might scupper my hopes by refusing to go with it. So I fear I will end up shoehorned into some wafty maxi dress that makes me look like a bullfrog in a nightie.
But if so, I'm determined to make up for it by wearing a fabulous pair of shoes. Perhaps Louboutins. It only means I'll have to eat baked beans for, ooh, the rest of my life. Totally worth it.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Although the book was recommended to me by a dear friend whose opinion I trust and respect, I confess that I approached A Clockwork Orange with not a little trepidation.
Both the novel and subsequent Stanley Kubrick film are notorious for their scenes of violence and rape, neither of which turn me on as a reader or a film fan, so it was something I had chosen to avoid on the assumption that it would take all value away from the story. But I have to admit that I was wrong and A Clockwork Orange turned out to be a highly intelligent and thought-provoking novel.
There are two things that hit you about the book straightaway. The first is the language, some sort of youth slang which appears almost impenetrable at first glance, but never underestimate the power and versatility of the human brain. Built for code-breaking, my little straining grey cells grasped it surprisingly quickly and although there were some words and phrases which I'm still not sure about, I was astonished at how easily I was able to follow the story.
The second thing is the violence. Within the first few pages, our lead character Alex and his cronies get up to some truly appalling antics, yet strangely enough it was not as nausea-inducing as I had assumed it would be. I put that firmly down to the use of this strange language, as it somehow muffles the horror, like watching the acts through obscured glass, or catching a conversation in French when you have only a beginner's grasp of the language and so can only pick up the general gist. Whether this was a deliberate ploy by Burgess to soften the blow of this revolting behaviour or not, I don't know, but it is somehow effective and leaves the reader feeling less soiled by the experience.
Alex, a 15-year-old delinquent who enjoys 'ultra violence', rape and classical music, is the stuff of nightmares. Yet he is also horribly real. Clearly an intelligent and articulate boy, you can't help feeling the same frustration with him as you would with a real-life promising child who goes the wrong way and, true to form, he dissolves into remorseless self pity the moment the tables are turned.
God knows when or where the book is set, but Burgess transports the reader there effortlessly. Without a word of background explanation as to what this dystopian future is like or how it got that way, the reader understands Alex's world very quickly. It sounds like a horrible place with little in the way of stimulation or warmth, which prompts the usual questions about whether nature or nurture is to blame for producing such a horrendous little arsehole.
I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that fairly early in the book, Alex is caught and submitted to a radical new treatment in which he essentially has a conscience forced upon him in the only way he can understand. And this is really the crux of the story's message - ideas of conscience and whether it is possible, or indeed desirable, to take away someone's free will for the sake of the greater good. Also, it raises uncomfortable questions about the conscience and its purpose. Do the majority of us avoid doing atrocious things to other people simply because we do not wish them to be harmed, or because we know we'll feel terrible if we did? Is all generosity, consideration and altruism simply a mask we wear, a facade that is more designed to protect the person within than be of benefit to the people around us?
When Alex - initially devoid of this burden - is forced into caring, it sheds a rather unsettling light on the true nature of human understanding and motives. Even when an unexpected ray of kindness enters Alex's life, it turns out that this person has their own motivations and is not above a little cruelty if it serves their purpose.
Like all the best endings, A Clockwork Orange leaves you wondering just what has really happened and quietly debating the story's themes with yourself long after you have turned the final page.
Both the novel and subsequent Stanley Kubrick film are notorious for their scenes of violence and rape, neither of which turn me on as a reader or a film fan, so it was something I had chosen to avoid on the assumption that it would take all value away from the story. But I have to admit that I was wrong and A Clockwork Orange turned out to be a highly intelligent and thought-provoking novel.
There are two things that hit you about the book straightaway. The first is the language, some sort of youth slang which appears almost impenetrable at first glance, but never underestimate the power and versatility of the human brain. Built for code-breaking, my little straining grey cells grasped it surprisingly quickly and although there were some words and phrases which I'm still not sure about, I was astonished at how easily I was able to follow the story.
The second thing is the violence. Within the first few pages, our lead character Alex and his cronies get up to some truly appalling antics, yet strangely enough it was not as nausea-inducing as I had assumed it would be. I put that firmly down to the use of this strange language, as it somehow muffles the horror, like watching the acts through obscured glass, or catching a conversation in French when you have only a beginner's grasp of the language and so can only pick up the general gist. Whether this was a deliberate ploy by Burgess to soften the blow of this revolting behaviour or not, I don't know, but it is somehow effective and leaves the reader feeling less soiled by the experience.
Alex, a 15-year-old delinquent who enjoys 'ultra violence', rape and classical music, is the stuff of nightmares. Yet he is also horribly real. Clearly an intelligent and articulate boy, you can't help feeling the same frustration with him as you would with a real-life promising child who goes the wrong way and, true to form, he dissolves into remorseless self pity the moment the tables are turned.
God knows when or where the book is set, but Burgess transports the reader there effortlessly. Without a word of background explanation as to what this dystopian future is like or how it got that way, the reader understands Alex's world very quickly. It sounds like a horrible place with little in the way of stimulation or warmth, which prompts the usual questions about whether nature or nurture is to blame for producing such a horrendous little arsehole.
I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that fairly early in the book, Alex is caught and submitted to a radical new treatment in which he essentially has a conscience forced upon him in the only way he can understand. And this is really the crux of the story's message - ideas of conscience and whether it is possible, or indeed desirable, to take away someone's free will for the sake of the greater good. Also, it raises uncomfortable questions about the conscience and its purpose. Do the majority of us avoid doing atrocious things to other people simply because we do not wish them to be harmed, or because we know we'll feel terrible if we did? Is all generosity, consideration and altruism simply a mask we wear, a facade that is more designed to protect the person within than be of benefit to the people around us?
When Alex - initially devoid of this burden - is forced into caring, it sheds a rather unsettling light on the true nature of human understanding and motives. Even when an unexpected ray of kindness enters Alex's life, it turns out that this person has their own motivations and is not above a little cruelty if it serves their purpose.
Like all the best endings, A Clockwork Orange leaves you wondering just what has really happened and quietly debating the story's themes with yourself long after you have turned the final page.
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