Hobo-man

I recently came across a ‘gentleman of the road’, sitting in a shop doorway, and drinking from a can of Kestrel at just past nine in the morning. 

“Ha ha ha I’m not being very p.c!” the hobo-man said, brandishing his can by way of a toast. 

I continued on my way, pretending not to hear him. Of course, I reflected - as I hurried towards the sanctity of M&S and all the comfort and security of the middle-class shopping experience - getting pissed at 9 o’clock in the morning outside the Iceland on Sidwell Street, Exeter, has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness. Nor is it an effective means of ‘challenging’ the establishment. He is merely playing up to the stereotype that all tramps get wankered at unseemly hours of the day. He was not formulating a conspiracy to bring down the Murdoch empire, or concocting ways to undermine David Cameron. 

I glanced back towards hobo-man, who was now engaged in a wordless discussion with Iceland’s resident security guard, staring blearily up at him and waving his Kestrel can. He was the perfect incarnation of the recurring nightmare I’ve had since grammar school - the nightmare of failing, and ending up like hobo-man. His choice to be ‘politically incorrect’, by indulging in the vaguely risky fun of drinking cheap lager when most people are at work, chimed very well with the habits and lifestyle of student-hood that I have officially chosen to leave behind. No longer is it acceptable to devote an entire day to drinking - not that I ever have; my old-woman tendencies extend to my liver also. Going out will be confined to Friday and Saturday night, once regular employment occurs. I am no longer privy to the accepted norm that all students are allowed to sit around in their pyjamas all day, spooning Sugar Puffs into their mouths and watching Friends re-runs. 

I am now entering a phase of life where less gravity is placed upon the type of underwear I chose to put on each morning, largely because I believe I have reached a point in life where I am more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever been. And my own skin says miniscule g-strings are not a good idea. Men are becoming blessedly forgiving creatures, so really you could get away with wearing a Gregg’s paper bag with leg-holes torn in it, and it wouldn’t put them off. The demented level of self-preparation that you undergo before each outing to Arena is beginning to wear off, and is being replaced by a violent feeling needing to come across as ‘serious’ and ‘capable’ in the workplace. My hair has emerged from its ‘wilderness years’ - I wore my graduation cap without hair-related tragedy. I do not feel the need to EVER WEAR FALSE EYELASHES EVER AGAIN (largely because the first and only time I tried them, I glued my eyes shut). 

Having just lived through my last week as a student - and the closest I ever want to be to hobo-man’s lifestyle - I’m very frightened at the prospect of having no clear-cut ‘plan’ for the future for the first time ever. Luckily, I’ve moved on from my childhood conviction that I was destined to be a princess. A goddess. An air hostess. But I have managed to create a more concrete form of who I think I am as a person, and this includes my complete intolerance towards dirt, and an unhealthy Facebook obsession. Now the real world looks very frightening, but in another ten years, when my eons of chocolate abuse have caught up with me, and I weigh 20 stone, I bet I’ll be longing for the uncertainty of today once again. I will be craving to be ‘politically incorrect’ and keep up my enthusiasm for cocktails at any time of day. We’ll all be longing for that infamous duvet day. 

Congratulations Class of 2011; here’s to the mini hobo-man in all our student-selves...and here’s to the road to adult responsibility! 

"I am in heels! I am woman!"

Having spent the past few weeks searching for a suitable pair of heels for my graduation ceremony, I have accepted that my ability to look ‘professional’ might be somewhat compromised by my deep-seated hatred of high-heeled shoes. This is somewhat at odds with the stereotype that women are supposed to adore heels, more than their own bodies or thoughts. One feature in Elle even concludes that a woman in heels possesses the “greatest weapons in the style wars”. A woman in five-inch platforms can easily dominate in the boardroom and achieve her aims. In fact, womens’ magazines generally have an unequivocal stance about heels: they form an exclusive and specialised part of a woman, along with the potential to lactate. 

My first pair of heels were hideous specimens. They were purple, and made from that cheap, plastic-y leather that makes your feet sweat as you walk. I had to wear them as part of a summer ball outfit, and the moment I put them on, I was only too painfully aware of the notion that each step I took, I was demonstrating what it would be like to have dying mice as my insoles. I also remember them being quite painful in that sort of itchy pinching-toes kind of way - but no matter! I was in heels, I was a woman! What a privilege. Instead I spent most of the evening sitting or leaning against various objects and people in order to relieve the unrelenting pain in the balls of my feet. For the days that followed this discomfort, I refused to wear anything but slippers.

If we lay aside the fact that heels are the source of much discomfort, we should consider the potential they have in ruining an evening completely. I have had too many heel-induced accidents to count. One was when I was mistakenly assumed to be drunk, because I overbalanced on my heels (platform black boots) in front of the bouncer. The result was that I was denied entry to the club, because in the bouncer’s eyes, I was so intoxicated I could not stand up properly. In fact, I had been trying to transfer my weight away from the balls of my feet, and was understandably unsteady. My explanation that my shoes were inflicting eye-watering amounts of pain on me were waved aside, as were my claims that “No one messes with a woman in heels. I am a woman”. I had no option but to go home, heels in hand.

However, I am not one to give up easily, and three years on from that night in front of the bouncer, my wardrobe is testament to the amount of faith I placed in the ideal that women belong in heels. And of course, along with many more pairs, I also have many more anecdotes about various outings at which I have humiliated and/or exposed myself, unable to compete with my female peers, by falling over. The fact that I am already developing a bunion on my right foot says it all: we do not belong in heels that could be used as a murder weapon. I can only conclude that the ability to walk effortlessly and without periodic wincing in six-inch heels lies with a select group of around ten people in the world. Six of them are run-way models. 

So why do women keep on buying - often spending considerable sums of money - and wearing these torturous items of footwear? Was Germaine Greer right when she claimed that women wear heels to catch the eyes of men?  Did Freud have a point when he claimed that the shoe is an object of fetishism as it “crystallizes the moment of the undressing, the last moment in which the woman could still be regarded as phallic”. 

I would not agree with either of these theories. I base my judgements about female footwear on the experiences of both my contemporaries and myself. We wear heels because they make your legs look thinner: end of. There is nothing more that can be said on the matter. This is why we endure countless hours of bone-crushing pain, risking premature arthritis of the feet and broken ankles. There is nothing more important to a woman than whether or not she feels good inside, and more often than not, heels come to the rescue in making us appear taller, thinner and as a result more confident. Brushing aside the fact that we are subscribing to society’s prescribed expectations of feminine beauty, I for one keep buying the heels because I like their ability to stop my ankles looking like pig trotters. However, reflecting on this further, I’ve decided that even this idea that heels are flattering is a lie that every woman invest in. I too, have done the same. I think of a new pair of heels as the most flattering, slimming things in the world...at least this happens for the time it takes for me to try on the heels in the shop, take a few paces and exclaim: “They’re actually really comfortable!”. Lies. Such self-deluded lies. 

Anyone only has to open the page of any celebrity magazine and find photographs of Victoria Beckham’s bunioned feet to see evidence of what thirty years of high heels can do to a woman. I, personally, do not wish to have toes that look like thalidomide pasties. 

Of course, despite me declaring that women’s shoes are ridiculous, dangerous, pain-inflicting torture contraptions, I will continue to buy new pairs of heels to accompany various outfits and ‘slim-line’ my figure. However, I now go out shoe-shopping with one specification in mind: if I am going to part with a substantial amount of my student budget on a pair of designer shoes, then I demand the following. I want them a) to be a pair that i can dance to the Black Eyed Peas in and b) to be a pair that will allow me to run away from a murderer, should one suddenly decide to give chase. That is now the minimum that I ask for in a pair of shoes - I should be able to dance in them, and escape a murderer. 

In the meantime, I realise that my views on heels are a minority interest; most girls my age have more bottle than me and are more than happy to dance through the pain. However, I have the mentality of a 60-year old. I watch Antiques Roadshow with interest, and enjoy Radio 4. I am a fan of comfortable, good quality clothes, but I don’t think style necessarily has to be compromised. As for shoes, who knows how long the after-effects of Sex and the City’s decade-long Blanik-wank will continue to rumble through society. 

Who would want to eat like a celebrity?

Favourite foods of mine... succulent beef Wellington accompanied by every possible trimming (namely, mashed potato with lots of butter..) followed by a decent helping of apple pie and custard.

       This meal choices makes me many things - British, greedy, and happy. But what it also means is that I would be a hopeless celebrity. My dietary choice leaves me amongst the ranks of the Unremarkable, my choice to consume many, many carbohydrates banishes me to the realms of the Distinctly Rotund.

If I had Madonna-esque status, my favourite foods would be wheat grass, grape-seed extract, bee pollen, warm algae infusions and bancha twig tisane. If I'm feeling like a treat, I'd lose myself in a hard-boiled egg. 

      Mercifully, I might not have Madonna's unbelievable figure, but I do still possess the ability to appreciate good food. I often consider the wonder-woman of the music industry at breakfast time, tucking into her fermented tempah and collard greens. Indeed, I am willing to make the assumption that it has been positively years since Madonna has been confronted by the sight of of a Hob-Nob. I have it on good authority - zealous celebrity food bloggers, naturally - that Madonna sticks to a strictly macrobiotic diet that consists of 50% wholegrains, balanced by a brutal exercise regime. All that yodelling, all those conical bras and morphing hairstyles, and what does she have to show for all her hard work? A plate of macrobiotic sprouts and a cup of laxative tea. 

      Speaking of 'detox' teas and their various counterparts, I am entirely unable to fathom why people pretend to enjoy the refreshing and restorative properties of green tea, of white tea, of kukicha tea. The only 'refreshing' properties stem from the fact the tea is usually so foul-tasting, that it kick-starts your brain into activity. Such teas veer between being so very bland its like drinking a cup of stale hot water, and being so cringingly bitter you cannot bear to gulp down the final dregs. Manufacturers claim bitterness only occurs when it is left to brew for too long. Excuse me for playing the part of dim-witted, ignorant consumer, but I never asked for my tea to demand so much of me. 

    Returning to Madonna and her various A-lister peers, we see evidence of celebrities discounting vital food groups all together. Take the actor, Tim Robbins, for example. According to my reliable source - another blogger of celebrity food - everyday out there in sunny California, Robbins starts his day with a bowl of organic oats with almond milk. Because, apparently, "nobody does dairy out here anymore". If you fail to pick up a carton of almond milk at your local branch of Tesco, then see if you can get your hands on any coconut water. It is The Drink of Choice, according to macrobiotic followers Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson. And to me, another way to ensure that you go about your day in a state of self-induced delirium, half crazed with hunger and misery. Any of form of fluid should definitely be un-cow milk (including rice, soy, macadamia, breast...). Suddenly, milk is no longer confined to the productive - and we can assume, to macrobiotic followers, polluted - abilities of the cow udder. It is my suspecting belief that somewhere near L.A is a high-tech lab facility, in which the scientists are employed soley to provide celebrities with another commodity that is unusual and laced with controversy, which us mere Distinctly Rotund won't get to taste for years. For now, the likes of sardine milk will remain firmly in the capable hands of Madonna's personal chef..

      Even snacking has moved beyond the realms of a packet of crisps. Instead, you can indulge in lotus root, umeboshi plums, daikon and wheat berries. If in doubt over how to eat any other normally inedible food stuffs, such as aloe vera, parsley and powdered flaxseed, just blend them. After all, protein shakes are the primary food group in Hollywood. But of course, they're no longer 'on trend' for A-listers because the rest of the world has discovered the benefits...and the side effects of flatulence.. 

     All of this strikes me as maddeningly complicated. You could drive yourself insane, living a life that requires an extensive memory of what is considered an "enzyme inhibitor". In all, such a dietary lifestyle adds up to a truly miserable existence, where half the joy of life that comes from discovering, preparing and eating food is reduced to something limited and as dull as a few pieces of lettuce and some aduki beans. I'd rather be fat and happy any day. 

Coping with a dissertation.

I remember a time in the near-distant past, when Mac computers were those hideous turquoise bubble-machines, and E-numbers were an expected phenomenon in crisps. This was the time when the Easter holidays were actually a time of fun and frolics and plentiful chocolate. Boredom would only arrive when your Gameboy ran out of battery. 

The reality of university holidays - no, let me be more specific - the reality of university holidays for a third-year English student involves soul-destroying amounts of boredom. For the past two weeks, I have been confronted by my dissertation (on Catholicism in Graham Greene novels, don’t you know) everywhere I turn. This is because there is nothing else to do, no distractions other than traipsing after my mother around the supermarket. The situation is made worse by the fact that all of my chums are sinking in mires of revision and essay-writing; home instilled within me the unavoidable need to do work, probably because I have never been able to stand libraries. For one thing, I have never been able to produce anything decent in a room full of brains that are all fizzing with intense, work-focused thought processes. Libraries are useful for one thing, and one thing only: observing odd people. Contemplating examples of undisputed abnormal behavior is an arresting enough distraction all by itself. I once watched a man of about thirty remove his shirt (this was mid-January, might I add) and kneel upon what can only be described as a prayer cushion, instead of using a chair. He then proceeded to get out a pad of paper, and drew hundreds of circles upon one page for the next forty minutes. All the time I was transfixed by this phenomenon - meanwhile, no progress was made with Ulysseus. 

I’ve had almost two weeks off so far, and it has hardly flown by. Each day is the same, sitting at my computer, surrounded by books, attempting decent thought. A few days ago however, I reached something that I suppose can be described as ‘breaking point’.  Yet, by 11am, I had drunk fourteen cups of tea, read all the newspapers and then...and then what? Catholics. 

By lunchtime, I was so bored that I decided to mop the kitchen floor. So, I found a mop, and later my mother came along to mop over all the bits I’d missed - the whole floor, in other words. I then tried to fix my chest of drawers, which broke the day we bought it. And later, my mum came along only to put the drawer back together again. Days like this went by in slow succession. I am now at the point where I find myself staring at the day through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Each morning, bed and the blessed relief of unconsciousness seem so far away. 

I half suspect that I’ve begun to wear a groove in the kitchen floor with endless trips to the fridge, hoping against hope that I have somehow missed a plateful of apple pie on the previous 4,000 excursions. 

I decided, following the chest of drawers debacle, that the next day should involve visiting the bookshop, to buy books to read for pleasure. This is now an alien concept to me, after two and a half years of being bored to death by various catastrophes of literature - primarily Austen, Defoe, Donne, Joyce, Beckett, any of Chaucer’s contemporaries... it is amazing that I still like reading at all. Having selected my light reading, it occurred to me that my choices are somewhat reflective of my own present situation in life. Namely, if it involves my dissertation, life is dire. I chose Karen Maitland’s medieval murder-thriller-mystery-thing, in which the lives of the characters are so wretched, so full of unfettered, unrelenting misery, that it makes you feel thankful that you were born in an age of sanitation and sewage-systems. A few weeks of dissertation torture is preferable to death by plague before your 20th birthday. 

The next stage in combating my boredom requires some effort. It now seems appropriate that I develop some kind of illness. This is a good idea when you are at a loose end, because everything, up to and including herpes, is better than being bored. It is hard, I know, to summon up a bout of genital sores at will, but what with it being unseasonably warm at this time of year, pollen is about. And if pollen is about, it is more than possible for me to develop hay fever two months early. If I whimper enough, it could easily pass for a “summer cold”, as my mother would say. And yes, even ingesting enough anti-histamines to place you into a state of self-induced drowsiness is preferable to spending days on end contemplating the nuances of the Catholic attitude towards felix culpa.