Pussies, Power & Pleasure, Oh My!

I don’t like my voice. I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the way I move. I don’t like the way I act. I mean, period. So, you know, I don’t like myself.

Elizabeth Taylor, the most beautiful woman in the world once upon a time…

Venus in furs

Ok, so I’ve started frequenting Starbucks. I don’t really like Starbucks, I’m usually a Pret patron, and then mostly only because I can’t relax enough to hang in independent cafés – oh, that and the soya lattes. Monolithic mass produced coffee houses may be High Street hussies, but they take your money and don’t ask questions when you stay long after your cup is dry, tip tapping away on your laptop – not so ethical I know.

Just tea zen

I console myself with the thought, at least the coffee’s Fairtrade, but then gobble fruit toast dowsed in butter washed down with English Breakfast tea – when in London, I say. After all it’s the toffee-ness of the warm, sticky fruits and the decadent drizzle of butter which bribed me to sign my divorce papers, before I went to work the other week. I’m harnessing the power of pleasure to have my way with the world, you see –although this may be more ‘ a spoonful of sugar’ as Mary Poppins called it.

Moaning over spilt milk...

The other week I had a day or two off and I was thinking as I read, Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts – Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way With the World, that instead of reading the pretty-in-pink book while devouring fruit toast I should be in New York taking a bite out of the Big Apple.

After all Sister Goddess Mary told me I could have ‘all my dreams and desires’. She said, she ‘believed’ in me and that if I wanted in on the Womanly Arts Mastery Program I could. But I either didn’t want it, or believe it, or something it enough. Mostly I just found it too damn hard to take that leap of faith over the pond and go with the cash flow.

You godda have faitha, faitha, faith-ahh...

Let me explain: Regina Thomashauer, aka Mama Gena, has a School of Womanly Arts in NYC. No, it’s not a finishing school…well not the sort for balancing books on yer ‘ noodle. It’s a kinda modern-day temple-cum-training-centre for nurturing the divine in every female – thus the Sister Goddess epithet.

The word ‘goddess’ has been undermined of late; oft used in conjunction with conspicuous consumption, cookery or copulation – think ‘domestic goddess’, ‘sex goddess’, or Vidal Sassoon hair appliances. Mama G on the other hand is here to tell you ‘women are the most untapped creative resource in the world’ and that being a Sister Goddess – power with a heart and soul – is the way.

“Your dreams, your desires are not too big for you. They are just the right size. And they are rapidly and readily accessible if you follow me through the doorway of pleasure.”

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted

Sounds deliciously Alice in Wonderland-ian, right? Her Mastery manifesto sees Mama G citing such luminaries, as siren of the silver screen, old wiggle hips, sofa lips, Mae West, who reckoned pleasure not pleasing was a girl’s best friend:

“I felt it was time to play. Most of my thoughts, time and energy had gone into creative effort. And this restriction of the love drive, the headshrinkers will tell you, is the greatest urge one really has. When one sublimates the sex drive into creative work it puts a person in high gear mentally. I admit it. But it is against my nature to bottle up the biological plans of pleasure for any length of time. I hope I don’t sound as if I have discovered the secret salve that soothes the universe, but I do want to add my small footnote on the subject.”

Mama calls these “biological plans of pleasure” Pussy:

“Pussy extends way beyond the crotch. In my world, Pussy is a metaphysical term that refers to the essence of female power.”

Birth of Venus

Cor, I can see the men in my life wincing in my mind’s little eye! My otherwise female-friend-ly manager is convinced any of the goddess-style, women-centric classes I rock up to are actually male-hating, sock-titted, feminist covens. And as for Mr Glittery, god’s gift to good girl pleasure, he was completely freaked over my capsule collection of what he called ‘porn’ memoirs, like The Sexual Life of Catherine M, and erotic tales by Anais Nin. Alright, they could be porn I guess, but he said it like ‘porn’ was meant to be a male preserve. And my possession of erotica seemed to arouse his suspicions and question his manhood.

Bedtime reading

Twice he compared me to paintings of Venus, goddess of love and sex. Yes, really. And yes, love is a bit blurred of vision guys. Two different paintings, in fact. Same feeling: powerlessness. He had a thing about action women. How much more passive can you get than a painting? How much more powerless can you feel than when you let a guy in your bed? That’s how I’d come to see it anyway. So when I read the words:

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

I began to cry. In Starbucks.

Shake Ya Tailfeather

My adventuressing over the last couple of years has led me to realise I’ve needed a guy partly to feel socially acceptable. But whenever I found out a chap dug me I just didn’t geddit. “The one thing I don’t like about you,” Mr Glittery observed, in bed one day, “Is you don’t like yourself.” Therein lies [sic] the problem. You wind up saying what you think people want to hear for fear of being found to be, well, you. The fear I felt trying to hold it all together – not very well I might add – manifested in myriad ways; including menstrual irregularities and ultimately an eerily silent halt to proceedings.

Darling, Im feeling a bit flat

I guess Mama G would say Pussy was protesting.

Goodbye Damsel in Distress, Hello Princess Adventuress

The day after New Year’s day I did a boot sale with my sister. It was freeeezing. It was also a magical mystery tour into the mind of the boot sale attendee – how comes £1 for an angora beret is a steal in a charity shop, but something to be tutted at and bartered with at a boot sale? Oh, and it was a lesson in what not to buy my parents for Christmas.

Cinderella was a real bombshell...

Throughout the de-cluttering boot sale stock accumulation process we came across a few former treasures: diamonique encrusted watches which had stopped in their tracks; books we’d meant to read; and a Cinderella figurine, with her now mutilated Prince Charming, I’d bought as a souvenir from Euro Disney when I was 16.

Sis thought it made an intriguing image and snapped the pair on the window sill. Dad thought the prince’s headless, one legged and de-slipper-proffering-armed-ness was somehow symbolic.  It struck even me that I’d donned a not dissimilar Cinderella-blue gown at my wedding.

Cinderella nailed her fella…

Of course, instead of happily ever after it all turned out more like that scene from Labyrinth where Sarah, the whiny teen damsel in distress, declares David Goblin King Bowie has no power over her; and the whole magical mirrored spellbinding façade  cracks from side to side.

Unlike Jennifer Connelly I decided on the simple boob baring demo during the first dance instead.  This impromptu act – my husband’s wrist was apparently caught in my dress strap – proved beyond a doubt I was not the princess bride, but a stick-on chicken fillet sporting damsel.  I think I cried for 3 nights after that.  So what?  I hear you cry.

Damsel in a puffy dress

So, I’d been reading Caroline Myss‘ book Sacred Contracts; a book where “…Myss explains how you can identify your own spiritual energies, or archetypes, and use them to help you find out what you are here on earth to learn and whom you are meant to meet.” And one of the first archetypes I’d identified as playing a prominent part in the pantomime which is my life, was the damsel, aka the princess; or the shadow side to the princess proper.

It’s not so easy, identifying your archetypes, I found it a bit like Three Men in a Boat when the narrator diagnoses himself with every disease described in a medical dictionary – except Housemaid’s Knee. In a way this isn’t surprising: Myss asserts we have 12 prominent archetypes; these all have a light and shadow side.  We’ll see influences of others too – rather like an archetypal kaleidoscope I like to think. However the damsel in distress princess archetype screamed out at me; it was obvious: I am … I was… I have been the damsel in distress all my life.

Pink peril

It’s funny what a simple revelation can do.  Suddenly I could see lengthy tressed damsels stressing their way through my (hi)story. First, there was the Perils of Penelope Pitstop where the hapless heroine was dangled over alligator infested pools by the Hooded Claw; and Nosferatu climbing the stairway to terrorise that foolish girl who doesn’t hide under the duvet. Then, when I was 8 my first male teacher, Mr Lymer, said I reminded him of Princess Diana because of my aloofness.

Let Sleeping Beauties lie...

My parents bought me Sleeping Beauty, for my 16th Birthday – somewhat ironic considering my somnambulist-esque existence. Then there were all those Pre-Raphaelite fainting fairy maids I fancied myself as at art college – someone once asked me to pose as Ophelia. Geez.  Then there were all the guys who wanted to save little ol’ me, from the big bad world in my head.  I even asked Mr Glittery to tie me to a tree and play highway man – he wrote me a story instead. Typical.

"What, what," said the Lady of Shallot

At uni John William Waterhouse’s, wilting waif, the Lady of Shallot was one of my style inspirations.  And obviously the long blonde hair said ‘princess’ to more than a few peeps, but even when I tamed and tied it into knots I’d just become a silver screen Hitchcock Heroine (aka modern-day cinematic damsel). Eeek.

He was expecting a frosty reception...

I went to see Matthew Bourne‘s Blitz-based  ballet, Cinderella, just before Christmas. There’s a copy of The Constant Princess on my desk at work. And when my work mate, Funny Girl, told me she was going to buy me a book, she said, “I thought you’d like The Princess Bride or that one about the ugly sister.”  So I’m still surrounded by distressed princesses.  But I guess like the ugly sister who’s getting the chance to put the record straight, it’s about time to step out of the forest of shadows and into the light, bright side of this archetype stuff and tell a new tale.

Maybe?

The question is: what to wear?

Too Fat to Flap? – & Other Musings on 20s Style

“Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.”

— Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

Prohibition poster gals

The other Saturday night was Prohibition night: a night where peeps get together to relive the roaring twenties; sipping booze from china whilst doing the Charleston; and sizing up each other’s sartorial prowess – or some such ballyhoo. I don’t know, I used to love dressing up, I also used to love all things vintage … well, maybe not all things, but 1920s is definitely not my cup of cha.

Flip flapping away...

First I got in a minor mental flap over the dress: there is no way I’m shelling out hard earned cash for a dress I’m never gonna wear again AND which’ll make me look like a sausage bursting at the seams. The fat flapper – sounds like a sea lion – is not a look I relish sporting.  And so I fashioned me a dress from an old fringed scarf and a slip. It served as a distraction:  “No, it’s not me that’s all wobbly, it’s the dress.”

Jazz babies

Then I got to watching the House of Elliot, or at least the first two episodes someone has uploaded to Youtube, and got all disgruntled about sexism and well… clothes.  For one thing, the freedom the corset-less ‘flapper’ dress spelled for the feminine form was not as liberating for the curvy gal as it was for the gamine gal.

Don't look now, but ...

As much as I would love my wavy hair to be poker straight and my hips to be even straighter it’s as though curves have predestined me to feel like a fat, round peg in the jazzy juvenile hole of the twenties and thus not fit to flap.

Feelin' fruity

Not that I’m complaining, much. It’s just all this thinking about being boyish has made me more body conscious than usual. Although it’s not unusual to feel trapped in a woman’s body in a man’s world, it’s really only when you come to squeeze yourself into a style from an era your body wasn’t made for that you realise how lucky we are to live in a time where almost anything goes – in theory at least.

Flapping good ethi-cool style:

• Pachacuti – get up cloche & personal in hats with soul
• Annie’s – get the original dress & bead the best
• Ivana Basilotta – a lotta ethical silk dresses with a 20s twist for SS 2011

Diamond Mining & Divine Dung Beetles

Brandon Bays is possibly the purest looking person I have ever seen. Her serene smile and blinding blonde-ness, to me, advertised a perfection far beyond that of mere glossy glamour, but an actual, unobtainable, real deal, inner radiance. So, although I’d seen The Journey and it’s accompanying marketing material emblazoned with the blonde-one all over the proverbial mind, body and spirit shop for donkeys I’d given it a miss.

Brandon bright & beautiful

Then recently, through a series of fortunate events, let’s say, I decided to read The Journey and indeed undergo the Journey work.

It all began with my summer hols. Being on the impecunious side I stayed home. And being a bit cheesed with the old “career” I embarked on a tactical mission: including a plan to blanket bomb Brick Lane and its environs with my wee CV.

Fancy dung beetle, eh?

But, first, in the name of vacation celebration I bought myself an iridescent perspex winged scarab pendant, I’d had my eye on, from Spitalfield’s Sunday market. A few days later, armed with CV and adorned with said scarab I left the flat to implement said mission.

A nagging feeling gnawed at my gut. And, as the day drew on, it seemed that one thing after another went against the completion of operation “I’ve got a job I dread, get me out of here!”. The nagging feeling turned into an outright groan.

In the old days, the old me would have ignored all this groaning and put it down to too many Grapenuts. But now I take the groaning to be a message of sorts. So I returned to base, where my guts and I had it out.

“You never listen to me,” said guts.

“I do!” I protested, a little too loudly to mask the guilt – I knew they were right.

Guts grumbled something incomprehensible, but utterly unmistakable.

“Ok, ok, I’m listening!!” I said. “I know the CV thing is a bad idea. I need to go with the flow… and all that jazz. I need to go back to mind, body, spirit boot camp.”

Guts prescribed a course in Damien Senn’s People You Should Meet free audio interviews and Hay House Radio – Radio for Your Soul -all good for the down at heel as well as down of heart.

PYSM happened to have a recording of BB on Abundance. I listened. I learned. I was intrigued. BB’s personal journey began with a basket ball size tumour – wtf! Instead of following the conventional cut-it-out method, she decided to see what the tumour was trying to tell her – and it had some pretty darned interesting things to say, diminishing and finally disappearing altogether like a monster confronted in a fairytale.

Colour me beautiful

And so I was thinking about what I really wanted to do for a career. And I was pondering the question of colour. I’d been to an aura painting class last year and met a lovely lady who worked intuitively with colour. We’d been partners for the day and she claimed I’d drawn her aura almost exactly as she sensed it. She in turn had drawn a curious image of mine, which someone had remarked looked like a scarab. And it featured a winged diamond at a point she said was the third eye. I dug the picture out. And it got me thinking that I was thinking too much. I’d felt her aura, almost imperceptibly, like the beating of butterfly wings…

Then my friend T, back from her own incredible one woman journey round the world, came up to stay. I donned the scarab pendant and we hung out in London’s finest holistic and esoteric bookshops, from Watkin’s to Atlantis. But it was in the Oxfam bookshop near the British Museum that I found, yes, a copy of The Journey. Being as it was a few squids I bought it, despite Brandon’s seemingly over zealous blissful blonde-ness.

Painting by books...

The next day I went park hopping and devoured The Journey cover to cover. I even looked at doing a workshop, but bank balance said, “No”. I flicked through the worksheets at the back of the book and mentioned the book to sis, in the hope she’d read it and agree to be my partner in The Journey, but she had her own distractions.

And then in amongst all this I’d been in and out of various medical establishments assessing the state of my lady bits. I even dragged sis to a scan, to take a squiz of my ovaries over the nurse’s shoulder. Ick and yet more ick. And I am getting to thinking that this particular physical problem can be pinpointed to a particular episode in real time and that doing some of this Journey work is the way forward.

But, as per usual, I’m procrastinating. And I’m back at work. And I’m wearing the scarab pendant, which makes my eccentric boss squeal “Nefertiti, Nefertiti!” and just drew a whole lot of attention from passers by, including one comment from a guy who said, “There’s an old rock band who used that symbol on their album covers. Who was it? Uhhh… oh, yeah, Journey.”

Don't stop believin'

And so I’m thinking… what’s all this about? Is it synchronicity? AM I meant to do something with all this? And so I look ‘synchronicity’ up on the web and lo and behold up comes Carl Jung and the Golden Scarab – a story of the birth of the theory of synchronicity or “meaningful coincidences”. Jung had this to say of the symbol itself:

“The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol. The ancient Egyptian Book of What Is in the Netherworld describes how the dead sun-god changes himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and then, at the twelfth station, mounts the barge which carries the rejuvenated sun-god into the morning sky.”

Dream man...

And in another story, I’ve mentioned before, goes something like this:

Once upon a time was born a brand, spanking new sparkly diamond, a twinkle in her creator’s eye. Perfect for shining and reflecting light she really brightened up the place. But then shit happened. This was said, that was done, and her light began to fade.

Pretty soon she was unrecognisable as her former self, a crusty pile of poo. Convinced she was ugly and seemingly attracting more piles of poo, she went out and got herself some fast acting, bedazzling body paint, the ads had said she was worth it, perhaps she was.

And for a while she felt a million dollars, as people flocked to frolic with her, told her how great she looked since the paint job. Thing is it was only skin deep, when it chipped, the poo showed through. And she began to feel poo and attract yet more poo all over again.

Then one day, she remembered when she was a little diamond, and how bright she’d shone. And so she began to dig inward.

Diamond geezers...

BB uses this analogy in The Journey and goes on to say:

“We should never stop transforming; just come ever more fully into the awareness of ourselves as the pristine diamond, always letting go of the limiting layers that seem to obscure us from our true selves.”

This then is The Journey. A real holiday. I wonder if I’ll get me a Journey glow?

Sing-Along-a-Sacrifice – What the Pagans Can Do for Us

Tempus may fugit, temperatures may crash and burn but trees are forever – well a really, really long time… usually.  I’ve been listening to medical intuitive Caroline Myss rant – she likes to rant, by her own admission – about holy ground being well, bloody everywhere.  You don’t need to climb a mountain high, or seek a valley low to find a rendezvous for you and the divine.  The ‘subway’, Myss reckons, is as good a place as any. 

Divine destination?

But there’s something about the brief portion of my twice daily walks to and from work through Bunhill Fields Cemetery with its peridot and emerald studded arbour, like a mosaic ceilinged sanctuary, which soothes the soul.

England's green & pleasant graveyards

Feeling a tad tetchy the other morning I spent a bit of time stroking one of the bigger trees – embarrassingly I didn’t even ask its name – and experienced almost instant calm. The permanence of the tree versus the transience or impermanence of this moment in time filled me with a sense of peace and perspective.

Don’t worry, I’m not developing Dendrophilia – a real live ‘philia’ apparently – despite the fact I found myself panting under another tree in Victoria Park later that same day at a very clammy British Military Fitness session.

The Mediterranean summer means we’ve actually been enjoying the great outdoors and the simple life.  Summertime and the living is eeeaaaaaaaasy: ice cubes chink against tall glasses at tennis matches, pianos tinkle everywhere – part of the London Festival – and people stink while listening to rock bands. And a few weeks hence me and my sis sung along at Sing-Along-A-Wickerman, the pagan feel-weird movie of the summer solstice season. 

Basket case?

 Oft overlooked, or merely looked over for little other than Britt Ekland’s stand in bottom and her bewitchery wooing of Edward Woodward, The Wicker Man belts out a barrage of frolicking folk-style songs by a certain Paul Giovanni.  The luscious lyrics tell of getting down and dirty in rigs of barley and weave the circle of life with the Maypole song, which comes with it’s own actions – way before  Macarena was a twinkle in Los del Río’s collective eye.

Does my bottom look big on her?

As weird and wacky as the pagan world is made out to be in the Wicker Man the film and its unusual music evoke a time when people felt an intrinsic connection to the natural world, and were, as a result, in awe of it.  The pagans, as the film’s many musical interludes suggest, were aware of their part in the rhythm of life. 

But as the long awaited Wicker Man finally made his entrance and went  up in a blaze of gory sis said she felt funny singing-along to a sacrificial slaughtering. This was one of the many criticisms The Guardian blog commentatoratti had been expressing, although the presence of the Director Robin Hardy seemed to sanction the proceedings.  And the abomination of Christopher Lees in their crazy haired, polo-necked, tweediness seemed happy enough.

This is not my boyfriend...

Someone somewhere said the sing-along assumes the sing-alongee is siding with the pagans, when it’s the foolhardy policeman we’re supposed to support. Thing is, he hasn’t any memorable numbers… well only a hymn at the end, he’s too busy bossing everyone around and telling them they’re wrong, and he’s right, to really let rip. And, perhaps, if we want to sing-along with the oh-so-happy pagans but ultimately empathise with the bobby-with-a-bug-up-his-bottom it’s because we can see ourselves in him. 

Get down with an Owl

If you can see beyond Britt Ekland’s stunt-stripper-derriere, or musical murder scenes, then perhaps singing-along with the Wicker Man reaches parts the film, and the landlord’s daughter, otherwise may not reach.  As tempatures sky rocket, oil spills into the Gulf of Mexico,  and NASA releases images of a Greenland glacier melting a mile overnight maybe it’s time to really stop, listen and sing. This could be the last act.  Roasted nuts anyone?

Roasted nuts with that, sir?

Sermon ends.

The Sandwoman Cometh – What Do Our Dreams Mean?

Whodunnit? You dunnit...

We all like a Whodunnit – well at least my mum does – but what if you dream you dunnit? According to Psychotherapist Philippa Perry, who led the Dream Workshop at the School of Life recently, you’re the best judge of your dreams – not those one size fits all dream dictionaries.

Philippa, looking like a kind of futuristic fusion of Pierrot and Hitchcock’s fave costume designer, Edith Head, presented us with a variety of ways to interpret our nightly forays into the land of nod. With the aid of her almost saucer-sized, fluorescent framed glasses (like magic wizard specs!) she took us on a sneaky peek of our psyches; urging us to roll up our sleeves, participate in our dreams and role play.

Role playing, for me, is the sort of thing nightmares are made of. But there were some only too willing to treat the audience to a re-enactment of the recurring riddles which haunt them in the wee hours. One woman’s nocturnal race against the clock to catch a plane, saw her play herself, the person hanging on the telephone, and the piles of paper she was stuffing willy nilly into her suitcase. Weirdly it was the piles of paper which had the most to say – notably she was taking the rubbish and leaving the good bits behind.

Lay down comic...

New perspectives are what Philippa is all about – this is where the magic glasses come in I reckon. Indeed her new book Couch Fiction – A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy gives the reader a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into one man’s sessions with his therapist. In using the medium of the graphic novel – illustrated by Junko Graat – we are also treated to a deity’s eye view of the minds of both the characters; this, along with strategically placed footnotes goes some way to de-mystifying the psychotherapeutic process.

As the wife of Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry, famed for his darkly plotted pots and Baby Jane frocks, it’s a given that Philippa would have a singular view of the world. But having witnessed a guy decipher his own body-buried-under-the-bush whodunnit it became clear we all express ourselves in weird and wonderful ways. And it seems that dreams are a way of communicating with ourselves, like personalised bedtime stories packaged by our own psyches.

“You don’t need help with interpretation now,” says Pat, the therapist in Couch Fiction, to James, the man-on-the-couch, who replies: “Ooo I do! I would never have got to vaginas without you.” And I have to say, I echo those sentiments. Philippa’s whistlestop Dream Workshop has led me to take a different view of my dreams; almost like I’ve been given my own pair of virtual magic specs – very illuminating! 

Although I’m not sure I want to find out why my dad turned up looking like George Clooney other night…

My Favourite Top – Has it Got Something to Hide?

Does my skeleton look big in this?

My favourite top is slash necked and bat-winged. Sounds like some vampire horror story of a garment I know, but I feel good when I wear it.  I love the sophisticatedness of the slash neck – not to be confused with a slashed neck, which is not at all sophisticated, or comfortable – and the relaxed yet elegant cut of the sleeves.  It is effortlessly stylish.  And yet, something has come between me and my top.  I’m beginning to suspect it may be hiding a skeleton in the closet.

I’ve no proof – just rumours.  But all the same it’s got me thinking, where had it been before we met on that clothes rack in Zara, the Knightsbridge branch, all those years ago?  Because, I don’t know if you know this, but cotton, which is mostly what my beloved top is made from, isn’t as soft and fluffy as we’re led to believe.  At least it doesn’t start out that way. 

I mean what would you think if you thought your top, could, in some small way, have contributed to an ecological catastrophe? The disappearance of a sea, no less. I couldn’t believe it.  I know, it’s hard to imagine an innocent, albeit subtly sexy, top could be mixed up in this sort of mess, but it seems the

Cotton - queen of the crops?

evidence is mounting against it.

So, ok, the story goes something like this: once upon a time the Aral Sea, which lies between Kazakhstan, in the north, and Uzbekistan, in the south, was the fourth largest lake in the world. For thousands of years, the local people made use of the Aral’s natural resources – for irrigating crops and fishing – until, under Soviet rule, Uzbekistan discovered the export potential of cotton. Ka-ching!  Jackpot! And so, began the slow draining of the Aral Sea, to irrigate what the present government affectionately term, ‘white gold’.  An apt nickname, considering it rakes in over $1 billion every year.

The thing is cotton’s a kinda thirsty old plant: according to Water Footprint, it takes around 2700 litres of

water to produce the cotton for one lil’ ol’ shirt.  It doesn’t take a genius to work out if Uzbekistan is one of the largest cotton exporters in the world then a whole lotta water is guzzled in the process. The result? On his visit there a couple of weeks ago, the UN and Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said:

“…[H]e could not see anything except a “cemetery of ships marooned in the sand.” As a result of the disaster, people are getting sick, the land is poisoned, and storms blow dust and salt as far as the North Pole.”

Cotton is quite greedy, for a plant

I guess it’s not my top’s fault, but it turns out, the desertification of the Aral Sea is just the tip of the iceberg, or something like that. Cos Uzbekistan’s President, Islam Karimov, poetically described by Sting, the

dictator’s daughter’s fave famous person, as, “…hermetically sealed in his own medieval, tyrannical mindset.”  has, according to the UN and Amnesty International, lived up to this description:

Sting in the tail?

“…boiling his enemies, slaughtering his poverty-stricken people when they protest, and conscripting armies of children for slave labour.”.  Sounds like a grimmerer and grimmerer Grimm’s fairytale.

Hmmm? What’s that? Child slave labour?  I mean if slaughtering and boiling doesn’t capture the public’s attention, then animal or child cruelty surely will – just look at those doe eyes!  Well, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, due to underinvestment and a shortage of agricultural machinery, 90% of Uzbek cotton is harvested by hand; and a lot of it by wee nippers, who miss up to 3 months of school, to pick the prickly crop – ouch!  The EJF’s Pick Your Cotton Carefully campaign has already encouraged many high street retailers to

Come along, kiddie-winkies!

commit to sourcing cotton elsewhere.  However, last month, fashion hotspots Zara and H&M found themselves in the hot seat, accused of buying Uzbek, and essentially supporting slavery. 

And so it goes on. There are many more tales to tell, from pesticide poisoning to sweat shop labour, but that’s for another day.  I’m not sure this is the end of the road for me and my fave top, maybe we can patch things up.  It just seems to me that it’s part of our responsibility to consider where our clothes – or anything we consume – have come from.  We can learn about each other that way – broaden our horizons.  And it’s a reminder, that although we may feel like our purchasing power is all just a drop in the ocean, even oceans can be finite, apparently.

Mad March & Ethical Fashion Con-Fusion

I’m late, I’m late! Noooo, I’m not pregnant – just way overdue. Where did February go? I just don’t know! But here we are well into March. In Bunhill Cemetery the daffodils are a-shaking their shocking yellow heads; and the bluebells are a-tinkling which means one thing: spring! Ding dong the witch is dead get outta bed…

Spring has sprung and I’ve returned from my year of self-imposed exile to London tan’s Eastend to start a-new. So I began my new London life in style by attending the Fashion Fusion Expo, “a showcase for the very best in ethical and sustainable designers”. A short stroll daan the

I'm off to the sustain-a-ball

frog (that’s authentic cockney rhyming slang …) to the labyrinthine Truman Brewery, the FFE was a little hard to find. But once I found it boy I wished I hadn’t.

I’d been peachy keen to get my teeth into some sustainable style, not to mention “…get up close and personal with … industry experts…” as the website claimed. I mean I’ve just become a fully fledged Holistic Colour & Style Consultant, don’t you know, and I want to make some contacts: designers I can tell my future clients about, that sort of thing. But after costing an arm and a leg to get in – a tenner, Olympia prices! – there turned out to be all of ten stalls; a couple of which looked strangely similar, so they kinda cancelled each other out…

And I’d set my heart on listening to a talk given by Image Consultant, Hannah Jean, who was supposed to be on at 12 noon, Saturday. She has an interesting slant on image and self empowerment and runs a project for teenage girls called Diva-licious – this is the

Curiouser & Curiouser

sort of stuff I want to hear about, the sort of stuff I want to do. But the talks were rescheduled and no-one seemed to know what was happening when: curiouser and curiouser. And by the time Hannah Jean appeared she was even later than this blog, and not all I’d anticipated. So I cut my losses and left.

I did manage to have a chat with some some lovely ladies however, including: Frank & Faith, who were exhibiting an array of simple separates in sustainable fabrics, in lush colours, made in the UK; NV, an “…ethical accessories company … producing entirely handmade, high quality bags and accessories, designed in Britain and created in Calcutta…”; and the Ethical Fashion Forum, who told me, it would be worth attending their monthly socials for networking porpoises… (I went to see Alice in 3D the night before last, and I’m toadally off my head now).

Surely the Fashion Fusion Expo was meant to establish ethical and sustainable as viable alternatives to fast

Green (& ethical) with NV

fashion? Instead it showed that green is not the new black it claims to be, but a pale imitation. My climate change enthusiast (if you can be enthusiastic about such a thing) house-mate had tagged along and insisted the reason for the FFE failure was that there isn’t that much ethical or eco fashion around, full stop. I was like, er, yeah there is! I mean, if the sustainable style message is missing this gal, then there has to be something seriously wrong.

And if events like these are the face of the ethical fashion industry then there’s no wonder people are sticking to their fast fashion fix. Fast fashion comes in enticing, addictive ‘eat me’ ‘drink me’ consumable, disposable packaging; and Green is still perceived as a bitter pill to swallow. For ethical and eco high ideals to be embraced by the high street, and beyond, events like these need to stop being Fashion Con-Fusion – ho ho ho – and start catwalking the talk.  (A bit like me and the old colour & style consulting business!)

Pyjama Saga – The 3Es & Wardrobe Wonderland

Where's the gold rush?

I was thinking: I’ve strayed from the path.  Meandered from my catwalk on the wild side and marauded all over the shop.  And so, I’m back to talk about the 3 E’s of style – all things: eco-friendly, ethical and economical.

2009 was not good on the wardrobe front.  Well… I say that, but in one way, a severe lack of money way, it was.  My impecuniousness mess meant I wasn’t at liberty to go frittering my hard earned dosh willy nilly. 

Coco wore the trousers - in bed...

On the other hand lack of dough means lack of choice. It means you seriously consider shopping in Primark, against your better judgement.  It means charity shops, boot sales and swishes are your big 3 E destinations; which is fine except if you really need something, it’s kinda luck if you come across it second hand. 

In fact, actually finding what you’re looking for is one of my biggest bugbears (I never say that in real life).    I just don’t get how there are so many shops, with so many shelves, featuring so many products, in so many variations and yet finding bog standard men’s-style pyjamas – pjs without ‘sex kitten’ emblazoned across the chest in diamanté – is nigh on impossible.  I have to say my timing – pre Christmas and post Coco avant Chanel biopic fashion frenzy – may have had something to do with it.  But it’s not only pyjamas, I’d like a red scarf. Pink, purple or green, yes.  Red.  No. 

And I’m not alone.  My friend has been searching high and lo for a navy blue duffle coat with red lining a la Paddington Bear, for years.  Having found said item to be a myth she investigated the possibility of having

Can't find those bear necessities...

one tailor-made.  All fine and dandy, if you’re Jonathan Ross, cos she was quoted something like, £500 for the job!  Eeek!  Somewhere like Vogue would say this is an ‘investment’, which it kinda is, unless like some of us you don’t have a credit card; and seeing as I’ve spied things for a few hundred squids in their Cheap & Chic supplements, who knows what planet they bank on. 

So I was intrigued to read this on the future of fashion, 2010 – 2020, in the free Stylist magazine thrust in my face outside Fenchurch Street station: 

“The customer will design their own clothes and accessories online or at store computer terminals.  Within an hour, their unique creations will be ready and thanks to 3D body scanning, they’ll fit perfectly.” 

Modern Millies are happy Millies

Sounds like a return to good old fashioned tailoring, with a Thoroughly Modern Milly of a twist to me.  Imagine clothes which actually fit! Wild, eh? Although I do have some reservations about the turnaround time of an ‘hour’!  Who is gonna be making these clothes – elves?  Or maybe by 2020 the economy will be so far up Sh*t Creek employing nimble-fingered infants will be the norm as parents who went mental with the IVF and got a litter of little ‘uns are forced to send ’em out to work for a pittance.   Cos my next thought is… cost.  There must be a catch 22 ‘ere somewhere…

But before I go meandering any further down Pondering Alley I just want to end this ‘ere entry by saying: it’s pretty darned obvious our consuming passions aren’t being satisfied by the fast fashion industry.  Or at least, if some of us are dead set on chameleon couture, then it needs to be properly disposable, ie, biodegradable, otherwise it’s just more slag for the heap.  And for those of us with a more long term wardrobe plan then it means you should be able to find the perfect LBD in one hit, instead of twenty clangers.

New Year & Northern Lights – A Kaleidoscope of Possibilities

I used to mark the New Year with a list: all my dreams and aspirations for the 12 months ahead written in black

Everything's crystal clear now...

 and white. Everything seemed possible. Clear as crystal. The year spread out before me ‘Like a virgin… shiny and new’. And my cup brimeth over with great expectations. Until, one year, I had ‘The Shining’ moment.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, TSM is when you realise someone, in this case me, is a total fruit loop. You know, when you take a peek at what you thought was a masterpiece of a novel only to find it’s actually: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typed a terrifying number of times. This is, of course, a whole lot worse when you are both the discoverer and the discovered because it just begs the question: Who the hell am I? And possibly: Am I dangerous? And: Should I believe myself anyway?

In my nut-case, my crazy-as-a-coconut head had deemed it necessary to create a To Do list at the beginning of the year which it then tried to prevent me from completing with all it’s lame excuses. You can do it tomorrow. That guy smells funny. There might be spiders in there. What if it turns black and falls off? And so on. Until one year, having completed my deep and crisp and even NYL I turned over what I thought was a new leaf, only to find last year’s practically the same completely uncompleted list on the other side!

Yes, my name is Earl (actually it’s not… that’s a boy’s name, but I like that programme.) and I’m a list-aholic. It’s just that it wasn’t until New Year last year that I realised how grave the situation was. NYL had seeped into everyday lists… which had just sort of multiplied like germs. And as my room

and my life got out of control, in an attempt to feel just a teensy bit better I’d write another list to sort it out. Then the list’d look so darned long, that I’d get all overwhelmed and just ignore it… until I felt compelled to write another one.

So when Mr Glittery was helping me organise my stuff ‘n’ nonsense last January, he was perhaps the victim of his own TSM, when he realised I really wasn’t just a coconut in name, but also in nature. “I need a lever arch file for my lists,” had been the moment of realisation. And I think

Crazy as Coconuts

sifting through all my unfinished art, writing, customisation projects and whatnot just emphasised the fact. He opened up a scrap book full of seemingly random magazine cuttings and said, “Now I know what’s going on in your head.” I felt ashamed. I wanted to hide it away like the mad woman in the attic. I tore my semi-completed sham of a novel away from his prying eyes and threw it in the bin. We’d unearthed far more demons than I was willing to face.

Then I made him angry. I think he thought the outburst was about one thing… possibly because the words which came out of my mouth suggested so, but in fact it was all about me feeling s**t about me and thinking: he must just wish he was back with his ex Sigourney-Weaver-look-a-like-script-editor girlfriend who actually gets things finished; doesn’t live with a bunch of rowdy 30-something guys who carry on like students; and most definitely doesn’t have a lever arch file for her lists. And… as it turned out I was right.

So this year, to mark the new me, as well as the new calendar, lists are banished and I’m creating a vision board. In fact I’ve had one on the wall for about six months or so now, well actually there’s kinda two. One side is a

Mr Universe

prompt for me, the other’s for the universe – by this I mean, you kinda let the powers that be get on with it… I know some people will think this is yet another sign that I’m on the slippery slope to insanity with skis on, but let me tell you something, just as many, if not more things have gotten done

on the ‘universe’ board than the ‘me’ board. Top of the popsicles is Iceland!

To make my grand entrance into 2010 in style I’ve attempted to purge myself of some of them aforementioned demons by having a bit of ‘spiritual detox’. I had my chakras balanced, cards read and a bit of sound healing – drum and all! People say, “Do you believe

Winter of discontent

all that stuff?” But I hardly believe myself most the time… Not to mention the fact that at our first reading she said – without prompt – “Oooh, it’s a bit crazy in there, isn’t it?” Meaning my head. “It’s full of magazine cuttings!” Sounds like my head to me.

And I’m leaving this year, this decade, behind feeling like I’m really starting to excavate the diamond from underneath all that rough stuff. I’ve gone back to basics: my roots. I’ve dug out my childhood dreams and put them in motion– honestly I knew far more then than the older me! My love of colour, need for creative expression, and enduring fascination with fairytales, I’ve realised, are far more than mere whimsy; they are necessary to my wellbeing – food for the soul if you will.

Northern lights at the end of the tunnel...

I’ve been experiencing my own Narnian netherworld (always winter, never Christmas), a kinda dark night of the soul, in recent years and although it’s been a bit of a bleak trek, I think that in being forced to retreat, to take a back seat, I have at last been able to see the always present light in that all encompassing darkness.  Like the Northern Lights the future is a bright, iridescent, kaleidoscope of possibilities in the midnight sky.

Email from the Future You – Ooh, scary…

Cosmic ordering – I’ll have no. 36, 67 and a coke please…