You know, when you've been Helga'd

Being a northern lass in London may have an awful lot of perks, namely that it’s socially acceptable to befriend strangers in bars and engage with fellow commuters on the last tube home.

But sometimes this friendliness can lead to an inability to say no, with some horrific results.

If a man speaks to you in the street, he’s invariably destined for a future of institutionalisation. Eye contact should be avoided at all costs. Having made the mistake of ignoring my own advice on one too many occasions, I’ve found myself trapped in hour-long conversations before handing over my personal details and agreeing to drinks, meals, days out, meeting their parents.

The anorexic Bob Geldof, a 22-year-old boy who, unperturbed by the age-gap, repeatedly called me “fruity” spring to mind.

Not to mention Latvian Lance, who insisted on walking me the length of the city:

“What’s your name?”

“Ellie,”

“Oh, I am LANCE!! We have the same name.”

No Lance, we really don’t.

At times of financial strain I also seem to attract every single street fundraiser capital-wide.

Post Japan and job hunting on my first day back in London, I was approached by a gaggle of aptly named charity muggers.

The typical conversation:

“I have no job, and no income,”

“But it’s for charity.......”

At this point the majority of the population would walk away with, at most, an apologetic shrug. But not me, in a whirlwind of uncertainty I found myself signing my non-existent funds away to three charities before the clock had even struck midday. Internet banking is the silver lining in this unfortunate sequence of events.

Answering the door yesterday I was faced with a lovely young girl stealing bank-details for the blind. Despite explaining that I have no income until I start my new role in September, I’m now the proud owner of a badge thanking me for making monthly contributions to such a worthwhile cause.

Trawling around weekend street markets, I deliver my trademark promise;  “I’ll just nip to a cash machine” to the majority of vendors pushing stalls brimming with miscellaneous crap.

However today, the day before the first of our social group ties the knot, was the long overdue reality call that I needed in my quest for assertiveness.

Venturing out for a routine eyebrow thread, I find a place charging a very reasonable £2. It’s cash only so I nip off to a cash machine before returning.

At which point the sales pitch ensues:

“We make eyebrow same as hair colour for £7,”

“Mmm maybe next time, I’ve got a wedding tomorrow,” I reply, dubiously.

“I promise you like. You look nice for wedding.”

I can’t even use the cash machine line as we are both well aware that I’ve just been.

In usual Ellie-style I find my mouth going into autopilot and succumbing before what little surviving grey-matter I still possess can protest.

As she shreds mystery hairs from the crevices of my eyelids she enquires:

“Why your forehead so spotty?” 

Very diplomatic, and just the kind of sales pitch to ensure repeat custom when touting for trade in one of the allegedly ‘most competitive’ areas of the city.

When I eventually blink enough brow remnants from my eyeballs to re-focus, I’m met with a paintbrush-brandishing beautician and pot of very dark paste.

I get the same sense of impending doom as the occasion I asked for a “Rachel cut” at the age of 15 and was subsequently nicknamed: “Wig on a stick” and “Beavis” by my peers.

They were dark times. Yet not as dark as my eyebrows.

“You want see?” she asks – tipping me upright to view her handiwork in the mirror.

I now resemble Hey Arnold’s unrequited love, Helga. It looks like I fell asleep at a house-party and someone took a permanent marker to my forehead.

For those of you unfamiliar with this reference, it's not pretty:

With a brow line that would be laughed out of Liverpool, I was even ashamed to make a planned pit-stop into Lidyl en-route home, instead running for cover as fast as my foal-like pins could trot.

Not wanting to steal the bride’s limelight with my monumental brows, I plan on spending the evening thinking about what I have done in the shower.

With a pan-scrub. 

Thin people have souls

Ever since exiting the puppy fat of toddlerhood, I have been plagued with a rapid metabolism and ability to have my cake and eat it without upping a couple of dress sizes.

Like so many others of a similar disposition, we are told all too often how “lucky” we are. 

Back in early 90’s Brit-Pop Britain, in a high-school way before skeletal-chic was in-vogue, having the physique and self-certainty of an embryonic foal was certainly nothing to feel “lucky” about.

With it came jibes from fuller bodied, busty girls whose sole purpose in life was to draw unwanted attention to their twig-like, pre-pubescent peers. 

Throughout life I have encountered an army of Russian dolls, as tall as they are wide, who think it’s perfectly acceptable to continuously offer patronising asides encouraging us to eat ourselves into obesity and join their clan.

Under the constant scrutiny of portly strangers, it’s never the average build that is desperate to up the UK obesity dynamic and produce a superior race that will, in due course, enter the realms of self-induced middle-aged incapacitation.

A few days ago, having already eaten two cakes and being genuinely full, I was ordered to eat another because I “needed it”. I was sorely tempted to suggest that the big massive fatty, and future diabetes-ridden amputee in question, should perhaps lay off the fucking cake because her gluttony is destined to have a detrimental effect on the already crumbling NHS and tax payers’ money. But I didn’t, because that would be frowned upon right?

Unfortunately offering health advice to people, who consume twice the recommended daily calorie intake on a regular basis and then kick up a fuss over their ‘basic human rights’ when they’re asked to pay double air-fares, isn’t socially acceptable.

But their ignoring the basic human rights of the people they wedge themselves in next to on long haul flights, their gargantuan forearms suffocating us to death like crash test dummies against an activated air-bag, while offering us a doughnut through pitiful eyes because “we need fattening up” is morally sound. 

Rant over.

There's no such word as nice? Unfortunately there is

SOME time ago I met up with a former newspaper rival and good friend. Following a whirlwind romance, premature declarations of undying love, move-in and the commitment of a dog, came the inevitable and far from amicable split.

“What went wrong?” I asked him.

“I just wanted to watch the football on a Sunday and she kept nagging me to go to a fucking flower market. The realisation came one morning when I came out of the bathroom and stood in dog shit and thought; 'I need to get the fuck out.'”

A long pause followed before he added; “Who the fuck goes to a flower market?”

More than a year later I discovered the answer to this question, which once burnt so deep into a grown man’s soul it marked the final shovel of earth thudding down on his coffin of circumstances.

Visiting Columbia Flower Market at the weekend was an experience which silently screamed a thousand truths. Engulfed in a swarm of dangerously high levels of human traffic, I was swept along amid a current of couples laden down with miscellaneous floral purchases wrapped in brown paper. Expressionless couples seeking to add colour to their mundane existences, laced with underlying hatred fuelled by a morning argument and an unwatched football match.

Initially I did think that perhaps a one-off trip to a flower market wasn’t exactly fair grounds for the termination of a live-in relationship. Yet as I forced my way through the crowds my friend’s wise words haunted every stride.

“Who the fuck goes to a flower market?”

It’s not the flower market but what the flower market signifies. Sullen-faced couples parading an array of colourful Sunday attires by way of compensation for their lacklustre lives.

These are the nice couples. The sort of people you visit for tea and cake and come away saying; “Wasn’t that a nice afternoon?”

The people who, on a Saturday evening, settle down in their separate chairs to watch Murder Mystery box-sets while she simultaneously knits to alleviate the chances of either admitting that they have fuck all left to say to each other.  

Non-descript, plain old nice.

But it isn’t arbitrary that entering the realms of couple-dom must mark the obliteration of prospective partner’s personalities and mass-sacrifice of any personal interests.

After sticking two fingers up to ‘nice’, my friend is now a prime example that you can have the best of both and he is an example I wish to follow. 

You know you’re getting old when people starting telling you you’re “not that old.”

With extra emphasis on the “that,” which is the verbal equivalent of it being underlined, in bold italics, font-size falling off the page.

A few days ago I was in the playground at the primary school where I work when a boy shrieked with horror. A scream so chilling he could quite realistically have spied the ghost of Jimmy Savile lingering outside the Year 1 toilets. Compelled to ask what troubled him, the response was terribly disconcerting on my part.

“Your elbows! They’re so wrinkly and they have baggy lumps,” he squawked.

It’s official.

I have old elbows.

Guessing my age, most children in the school go for early 20’s, and children are born with an inbuilt incapacity to be in any way economical with the truth with regards to the personal appearance of their elders.

In short they don’t lie.

A misspent youth indulging in life’s elixirs, namely alcohol of all forms, cut-price mouthwash and methylated spirits included and a penchant for socially chugging on Marlboro Lights, has blessed me with a dewy(ish) complexion. 

My gradually graying roots are easy to disguise and, eternally damned with the body of a 14 year old boy, it would defy the laws of science for my non-existent breasts to sag.

I would never have predicted the first give-away sign of my demise into the world of bed-baths and zimmer-frames would be my elbows. Elbows which reveal a truth so horrific they can cause a young boy to howl.

Having no desire to demand people guess my years to satiate an ageing ego, I find it odd that many total strangers will pose this question as an ice-breaker.

During an interview earlier this month, a member of the competition asked “how old do you think I am?”

When someone invites me to play age-roulette I immediately assume they aim to shock, that they will be older than me and looking for consolation that they don’t look a day over 25.

Upping the stakes I offered “33?”

“I’m 25,” she replied, which was awkward.

Hindsight tells me I should probably have dropped the “I’m not very good with ages” line and refused to answer. In fact no, if you don’t want to be offended then don’t fucking ask.

Granted in 10 years’ time I’ll be wondering what all the fuss was about. Forty-two, undoubtedly still single, the first batch of stray cats running riot over my urine infused bedsit, I’ll scream from the rafters to all 30-somethings “enjoy it while it lasts!”

So I’m taking heed of the wise words of my futuristic self. Contrary to popular belief among the 18-25 bracket, 32 isn’t THAT old and I’m having a fucking ball!

Dismount your moral horse and listen to Lumley

Joanna Lumley walked into the firing line this week after spouting advice which could severely reduce the risk of vulnerable young women falling prey to the gratification of sexual predators.

Yet from the ashes of the Suffragettes bras blossomed a growing trend of women with a penchant for swigging beer to the point of projectile vomiting down their minimalistic attires. Women who stick two fingers up to these deviants lurking in the depths of darkened alleyways.

Pankhurst would be pleased to see her efforts to liberate woman-kind being, quite literally, pissed up the wall with the surge of a generation of grotesque ladettes favouring belching and farting over voting and working.

In much the same way that no-one would leave their wallet on the table in a crowded bar while they nipped for a cigarette and expect it to still be there on their return, a woman wouldn't walk down an isolated street by herself if there was a rapist crouching in wait behind a Biffa bin. It's all about self preservation.

Yes it's a sad world when opportunist thieves will dip into the easy access handbags of innocent tube-dwellers, a man will get beaten to a pulp as he fiddles on the latest I-phone on its release day on an isolated bridge at midnight, or that vulnerable women can't go out dressed like a slutty Katie Price without the risk of abuse being ever present.

In any of these cases the victim is not to blame. Yet hold your bag closer to your chest, keep your phone in your pocket, put a coat on and order a cab and you can slash your chances of falling into the hands of the less morally astute.

Over the years I've put myself in some terrible potentially compromising situations, including nipping over the border to Mexico at one in the morning with a group of people I'd met hours previously (sorry mum). Thankfully I survived unscathed but will remain ever grateful having put myself in such grave danger.

In a column slating Lumley's advice The Independent's Victoria Wright makes the bold statement: "We can wear whatever we like, including vomit, and I can walk home alone at night if I wish."

This Ibiza-esque attitude is depressingly the stereotype a minority of Brits has gained us throughout Europe and beyond.

As the public mounts its moral horse, it continues to laugh at social degenerates going before the cameras on budget victim television shows from Jeremy Kyle to Blackpool 999.

Risk aside, we shouldn't stagger round with vomit dribbling down our fronts and skirts so short that the intricacies of our every crevice are displayed to all who glance in our direction. No backside looks good in skin tight Lycra, cellulite riddled or not.

It's trashy and it gives our country a bad name.

Jabba the Slut against the world

An inexplicable phenomenon is overtaking redneck America. That phenomenon comes in the form of one miniature, yet vastly porcine, individual who goes by the name “Honey Boo.”

This six-year-old beauty pageant winner, whose success is inarguably down to having eaten the competition, is gracing the television screens of buck-toothed hillbillies trailer wide.

She appears alongside confusingly related co-stars, including a 17-year-old cousin-sister, who Honey lovingly describes as “the pregnantest” member of her abhorrent tribe, and a mother suggestive that someone not so far down the line indulged in an extra-marital affair with Jabba the Hut.

                                   

You get the gist. 

Witnessing this atrocity last night on a countdown show of “the best and worst of 2012,” saw returning to the forefront of my mind a theory that is now posing a present and real threat to the future of humanity.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is reversing, devolution is rife, and there’s NOTHING we can do to stop it.

While the intelligent are waiting longer to ensure their offspring are conceived with an adequate prospective partner, the likes of Honey Boo and other DNA test chat-show fodder are presenting themselves to anything sporting a penis and a bottle of super strength cider from the moment they can toddle.

Big cities are still relatively safe but stray out into any seaside town north of London and it is possible to see devolution in its irreversible throws.

Recently taking the train from Preston in the general direction of Blackpool was a harrowing experience.

Not even lunchtime on a weekday and I’m confronted with scantily lycra-clad forty-something’s sporting glitzy cowboy hats and enough overhang to catch in their six-inch white patent stilettos. Each clutching a bottle of blue WKD.

Boarding the train I enter a scene I imagine not dissimilar to the waiting room for contestants seeking their five minutes of fame on the Jeremy Kyle Show.

My annual duty visit to the Brighton of the North is like taking a time machine to the Neanderthal age and beyond. Pyjama clad mothers sporting greased hair, mouths that naturally hang open and skin suggestive of a 40-a-day super-strength cigarette addiction waddle along using pushchairs, containing their eight-year-old Gregg’s pasty munching offspring, as walking aids.

Congregating outside the DSS office, magistrates’ court, Poundland and other local hotspots, there is little point to their existence.

And cult TV show: “Blackpool 999 what’s your emergency?” showcases those headed to the next extreme, including one nicotine-stained being, gender undisclosed, which never leaves it bed.

Soon there’ll be no professionals, no labourers, there won’t be any workers at all. Just a stream of zombies queuing up at midnight to collect their giro from a bank of money borrowed from fuck knows where.

But how could Darwin possibly have known that years down the line a steadily rising population would opt to spend the entirety of their existence slowly moulding into a sofa, eating additive riddled ready meals and obliterating what little gray matter remains with cut-price vodka and reality TV?

Compulsory euthanasia versus sterilisation? Let the debate begin.

Shopping for love leads to unwanted impulse buys

Internet dating sites pave the way for even the most socially awkward singles to portray themselves as the ultimate catch to a sea of women on the prowl for their, or rather 'a' one.  

Through a combination of carefully executed messages and flattering camera angles, they are able to falsely advertise their way to a drink and inevitable demise. Oddly so many of these hopefuls are oblivious to the fact that, when the 6 ft witty adonis they claim to be is actually 5ft five with a limp, a lisp and the grace of a pre-pubescent teen, it is inevitably going to go badly.

My recent date with Hans from Sweden is a prime example of the dangers of shopping for love. Over messages Hans almost made me ROFL so was definitely worth a drink. 

Arranging to meet at stereotypical first date venue, Gordon's Wine Bar, Hans flicks through the menu with panic etched across his face.

I ask if he's okay.

"Yes, I just try to find something that is not wine," he replies.

Having arranged to meet in a wine bar I would have thought it a logical assumption to jump to that they would serve predominantly wine. 

"Don't you like wine?" I ask, to which he responds, in a very Swedish and very loud voice with dramatic up-speak.

"No because zen I wooood has a giiiiirrrlfrieeend".

We're off to a good start. 

Several minutes of faffing later and Hans settles for a glass of house red and the bar tender pours two glasses to the very brim. I sense he senses my pain.

"Oh zey are veeerrry full no," he exclaims, turning to me and shouting: "Vaaaat ver you theenking ordering red vine in a bizzi vine bar?????" in my face before whisking the drinks high above his head, addressing the room as he makes his exit with the words:

"Scuse me viine coming through viiine coming through."

We are followed by every eye in the room. 

As we sit down and try to hold a conversation Hans is twitchy and his eyes keep darting to the side. I ask him if he's okay and he confesses that, being multi-lingual and suffering from ADD, he cannot concentrate on what I am saying because of the Russians sat at the next table and demands we move to  where a young girl is reading quietly. 

We begin to talk again and he tells me about people's lack of respect for pens, all the while harking back to the good old days when people took pride in their ballpoints.

Before long a girl comes and sits down, reading girl closes her book and they begin to talk, as people generally do in busy wine bars. 

Colour draining from his cheeks, ashen Hans' face is grave: "oh no, eet is appening again," he exclaims.

As I long for the comfort of my bed the bad situation continues to get worse and I am most certainly not seeing the funny side. 

Escaping to the toilet to compose myself I return to find Hans lecturing the girls at the next table about women's rights in the workplace. He springs up when he notices me and dashes off to get more drinks, leaving three girls and an awkward silence lingering behind. 

Incapable of lying Hans relays a woeful tale of how his application for life insurance was turned down when he was asked if he had ever dabbled with drugs.

"I said yes, I smoked the herb once, but it was nine years ago. The lady on the phone, she say to mee, if you say it was 10 years ago then we can insure you. Nine years? You are classified drug addict, I can pretend that I never heard what you just said." 

He paused pensively, before adding: "But I cannot lie, so I did not get life insurance."

I drank my drink, yawned dramatically, exclaimed "goodness is that the time," complained about having to be up early and went home.

The following week I met up with social networking manager Rob, who ironically possessed no social skills yet complained that people applying for roles in his company were too socially awkward.

He was not impressed by the waiter automatically serving me a large wine, commenting, "goodness, I'm glad I ordered beer now." Even less impressed by me teaching my nephew the term "pooh head," he spent the vast majority of the date banging on about marriage, babies and how he's a natural with children. 

Thankfully he made the decision to call it a night at 9.30 and, having been led to believe that there was a definite mutual unattraction, I breathed a sigh of relief. 

At the tube I gave him an awkward hug farewell, turning my face just in time as the kiss he intended to plant on my mouth slurped across my cheek with a dissatisfying smack. Sadly I think this uneventfully mediocre date was probably about as eventful as social networking manager Rob's life ever gets.    

There's those that don't even warrant a date. An 18 year old, a man offering to sire my children and provide financial stability in return for regular extra-marital affairs and a pleasant young gent who's only photos were of his penis, around which he sported a tattoo of Pinocchio's face, and a woman being spit roasted.  

And the forward men either offering 'discreet' fun or demanding blow jobs:

Him: "Will you give me a blow job."

Me: "Only if I can use teeth."

Him: "Oooooh kinky, what else will you do?"

And finally those without a shred of humour, such as this bland chap:

Him: "You do know you have "dogging" as an interest don't you?"

Me: "Of course. And basket weaving and tractor pulling, they're heavily underrated pursuits."

Him: "Just so we're clear, this is my understanding of the term dogging (link to wikipedia)."

Picking up a copy of Time Out and turning to the "strange conversations you've overheard this week" section, someone had texted in about disrespect for pens.