Jeanius

I have been on the hunt for a new pair of good-jeans-to-wear-with-heels for a few weeks now. Sadly, it's not going too well. Jeans must be the hardest article of clothing to get right, partly because it's so bloody difficult for girls to find a pair that fit around the hips and bum and don't gape at the back of the waistband. Then there's the possibility that, even if they fit you so well it's as though they were made for you, the arse/waistband of them will go completely out of shape after a couple of wears and render them obsolete. Another issue for me is the massive array of styles and washes to choose from in nearly every single shop; I have to try on every pair in my size for fear of overlooking My Perfect Jeans and frankly there's only so many times you can try to turn your head 180° to see how your rear end looks in a particular pair before you either get a serious crick or start to hate your ass with a vengeance. Of course you can't just go by what's nice on somebody else, but I have nonetheless been known to squint at other girl's asses from the bus in an attempt to identify the brand of denim that they're wearing if they look to be the same build as me.

This has led to me trying on every last cut [and of course wash] of jeans that Diesel, Oasis, River Island and Topshop produce. Diesel jeans just don't suit me, one of those things I can't *quite* put my finger on but they're just a bit meah. Some of Oasis' jeans look like they could be lovely on me but the 8 is just that bit too big. I seem to be between sizes in River Island and every pair of jeans I try on in there either make my legs look like tree trunks or viciously magnify my saddlebags. Topshop jeans just make my ass look weird, I think they sort of flatten it.

Since I could find nothing that suited me on the high street, I decided to cast my net wider to take in the premium denim ranges. I did my research in Brown Thomas and Harvey Nicks, then bought a pair of bootcut Seven For All Mankind jeans on fleaBay around this time last year. They didn't have my leg length in BT and then in Harvey Nicks the sales assistant was a total b*tch [when I asked for a size down from the jeans I had brought into the changing room I got a cocked eyebrow, was looked up and down and then asked "Really? Are you sure? Well, ok."] so I felt no guilt. Unfortunately, there are no nice or actually authentic jeans in my size up for sale on fleaBay at the moment. I don't want to buy from an internet store because the pictures they have up of their merchandise are just stock photos; at least with fleaBay you can see [or request] pictures of the jeans you want to buy to check out what the fading and whiskering and whatnot is like.

In a fit of madness and desperation last Friday week, I tried on and purchased a pair of Citizens of Humanity jeans in BT. They were shockingly dear, but I was able to justify it on a cost-per-wear basis. Ehem. As I was punching in my Visa PIN number, the girl at the till asked if I'd tried them on. I said I had. She said [as she was putting the receipt in the bag] "That's fine, did the girl in the fitting rooms tell you they stretch up to an inch with wear?" Ah, no, no she didn't, she was busy telling me that Seven jeans only come in a 34" leg and assuring a yummy mummy that her ass looked, like, totally great in this pair of James jeans [it looked squished], but I was in a rush and said I'm sure they'll be fine. I was genuinely thrilled with them until I got them home, tried them on, and discovered that (a) they fitted me *perfectly*, if they stretched by an inch they'd actually be too big, and (b) they made my ass look huuuuuuuuge. Like J-Lo huge. It was totally bizarro.

I shall be returning them this evening.

After the disappointment [and my Visa's relief] of the episode with the "they were just unsuitable" Citizens jeans, I was thrilled silly to find a pair of Seven jeans in with a 32" leg [shocker] while browsing in BT2 last Tuesday evening. Now, they were the same cut and colour as my fleaBay ones but a size smaller than them [which makes them two sizes down from the ones in Harvey Nicks, so ha to you, missus!]. Even so, they fit perfectly, and where I have taken up the fleaBay ones to wear with flats, these would be ideal with my heels. Re-sult!

Only... I am not *100%* sure about them. The fading on them is a bit more pronounced than on my own pair and I'm a bit worried about the sizing aswell. Don't know whether to keep them or not. Will the darker denim fade a bit with washing so that the contrast is less pronounced? Do they only fit me now because the people who tried them on before me were totally bet into them and stretched them and will they actually revert to being teeny tiny when they're washed? Tune in tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel...

WARNING: Whinge imminent. Save yourselves!

I’m in a bit of a flump today. It’s one of those "What Do I Want To Do With My Life / I Don’t Like My Job / Why Is The Right Lens Of My Glasses Scratched / I Have No Nice Clothes / My Skin Is Sh*t / Oh God I Think My A$s Is Starting to Head South / Why Are People So Rude / Will That Kid Ever Shut Up / Ah Crap Another Broken Nail" all-inclusive flumps.

The fact that it’s Monday isn’t helping, needless to say. Vilified in song by The Mamas + The Papas, The Bangles and The Boomtown Rats, Mondays are really only any good if they’re preceded by the words "Bank Holiday". And sure there isn’t another one of those for weeks.

Oh well. At least it’s nearly lunchtime.

Epilation: not a revelation

My little sister & I co-invested in an epilator a few years ago. It had fancy protruding massage-y bits to lessen any discomfort and came with a shaver head attachment. It was the Rolls Royce of the epilators then on the shelves. Like so many purchases, it seemed like a good buy at the time: we would save an absolute fortune in leg waxing costs over the lifetime of the epilator and would have silky smooth pins for weeks on end. No more frantically hunting for a razor when you decided at the last minute you wanted to wear a skirt!

The pain of my my first [and, as it happened, last] use of what I like to affectionately call The Devil's Own Hair Remover was so excruciating that it made my eyes water. It was incredibly, roar-inducingly sore. I could have understood it if I was a shaver; I'd have put it down to the roots of the regrowth being really strong and never having had the experience of getting my leg hair viciously reefed out of my skin. In fact, I had been getting my legs waxed religiously for a couple of months before trying epilation; theoretically, it should have been grand.

The epilating head of the device was relegated to The Bottom Drawer, where it probably still languishes with little plastic Barbie shoes whose pair could never be found, tubes of hair mascara and pages of stick-on nail tattoos.

Once bitten, twice shy, right? You'd think I'd have learned my lesson.

I had in me eye.

Only a few weeks ago, I read of the arrival into our fair isle of a new, improved and - wait for it! - practically pain-free epilator, Braun's Silk-épil Xelle. Ladies Who Expertly Epilate over on beaut.ie were calving about The New Magic Epilator and assuring epilation virgins that epilating really doesn't hurt anyways. Heidi Klum loves it too, according to the Braun website. And it was June, and I had two fabilis Karen Millen skirts sulking in my wardrobe about not getting worn on sunny days ["What does she mean she hasn't time to shave her legs, the hairy cow!"]

Now, I didn't just rush out and purchase the appliance in question. Give me some credit! No, I thought about it for a fortnight and did a bit of research and then rushed out and got it ;) It came with an ice pack to numb the area you were going to epilate and about fifty billion different heads to cater for beginners, facial epilation, bikini line epilation, the works. And of course it had the ubiquitous shaver head attachment.

Even though I was periodic, I used The New Magic Epilator for the first time the night that I bought it - when I purchase new things, I get so excited about them that I have to dive straight in and try them out immediately. Given the time of the month, I was expecting an inordinate amount of pain - which failed to materialise as far as my legs were concerned. I was really impressed - if it was this easy while I was periodic, how brilliant would it be when I wasn't?! My underarms were a different story though: the epilation itself felt like Beelzebub was ripping out each hair individually with his teeth and I couldn't put my arms down by my sides for ages and ages afterwards. The upshot was that I didn't so much have armpits as firepits for the next 24 hours.

Yesterday evening, I gamely decided to have my second epilation session: I had some pesky regrowth and wanted to organise nice silky legs for myself for the weekend ahead. So I took my leave of Property Ladder and retreated upstairs with my well-frozen ice pack to sort it aaaaht. I decided to tackle the underarms first; I must have been doing something wrong the last time, I convinced myself. I froze the relevant bits as instructed, stretched the skin taut, poised the epilator... and nearly collapsed with the soreness. It was absolutely horrendous, if anything, it was worse than my previous attempt. Gritting my teeth and blinking back the tears, I somehow managed to do both underarms without fainting.

With that ordeal out of the way, I froze my legs up good and proper, keeping my arms at a 90° angle to my body and occassionaly blowing on my poor underarms in a desperate attempt to ease the burning pain. I was actually looking forward to doing my legs: they hadn't been sore the last time I'd done them and I wasn't even periodic now, this was going to be a total breeze.

Only it wasn't. It was more of a Category 7 hurricane. That's right, the class of storm that would signal the end of the world. My shins were actually ok, but the pulling sensation on the rest of my legs - no matter how careful I was about keeping my skin stretched - was unmerciful, and the stinging! My God. And I noticed something that I hadn't previously: over the diabolical whirring noise of the epilator, I could actually hear my hairs being ripped out by the root.

I only managed to get one leg done. [The right one, for anyone who was wondering.] I had to leave it so after that. My leg was absolutely roasting and looked red raw - there weren't just little red pinpricks here and there, it looked like I'd gotten a rash on top of a second-degree burn - and it was actually a bit swollen.

What has me really narked about the whole episode is that the epilated areas weren't even left as fuzz-free as they would have been if I'd shaved. But I'm determined to make this work, dammit, red raw legs or no! If I actually get a couple of weeks of hairlessness out of the operation, I might give it another go. If I don't, well, I might have to compose a letter of complaint to Mr. Braun or Mr. Whoever-Invented-The-Epilator [because we all know it was a man]. It will be a brief letter, to the point, something along the lines of "Dear Sir, it is my sad duty to inform you that your latest effort is an unmitigated heap of sh*te. Yours, etc."

We'll see how it goes. Right now, I think I'd rather turn into a hairy molly than ever use it again.

It's time to take the train

Ahahahahahaaaaa, no, no it's NOT. And a Saturday afternoon in June is definitely not the time to be cruising the railroads. Although with all the catchy slogans, the Craig Doyle ads on the telly and the pictures of the Shiny New Trains on the Cork line you could be forgiven for thinking that surely it's always time to take the train. Now, I am not a big fan of public transport at the best of times [choruses of "What?" and "Really? Is she serious?" etc all round]. Being a seasoned commuter will do that to a person. Even so, I usually quite like rail travel: compared to being on a bus, it's infinitely less stressful [you're not sitting in traffic and, not to get all Derek Mooney on your asses, you can see loads of lickle bunnies in the mornings!] and definitely less likely to send you spiralling into the depths of claustrophobia.

However. Having attended an Evint and a few choice bars thereafter in Dublin on Friday night, I had occassion to Take The Train last Saturday afternoon. That train journey home was a bona fide nightmare, far worse than the state of the queuing system [a euphemism if ever I used one] at the ticket booths at Heuston; worse even than having to stand all the way to Port on the 1750 to Galway on a hot, sticky, clammy Friday evening when there's a chap on one side of you who isn't even on nodding terms with deoderant and a bird on the other with her iPod up so obnoxiously loud it's making your ears bleed. Saturday afternoon's trip was so bad that would have been head-wrecking even if I hadn’t had the teeniest tiniest little smidgen of a hangover; with one, it was just bloody unbearable and made me want to cut my own ears off with a blunt and rusty butterknife.

Allow me to give you the lie of the land, as it were, and explain just how hemmed in I was, on all sides, by Irritants; I think it's going to be the only way I can explain just how horrific the experience was. [And remember, children, I was hungover, make-up free, and very, very tired.]

Sitting in the "booth" behind me: three little madams from Tullamore. I’d say they were about 14 or 15 years of age and they gave these four [older] American tourists a load of hassle. The Americans had pre-booked their seats and, ergo, there were big signs on the seats to say they were reserved so of course the Tullamore ladies [ah, more euphemisms] disposed of the notices and plonked their ar*ses down in in the seats. When the Americans came along a few minutes later they said "Hey, I'm sorry girls, but you're in our seats. Didn't you see the signs?" and the Tullamorians [Tullamorons..? lol] were like "No, there was no signs, and anyways we're not, you can't reserve seats. Youse should have got here sooner", it was rather embarrassing. The main American woman [in her '50s or '60s!] was well able for them though, she was all "Oh yeah? Well our tickets have our seats numbers printed on them – these seat numbers – do yours? No? So you guys will just have to move". The brats did move, but they made a huge production out of it and my God the effing and blinding out of them was truly appalling.

Sitting in the booth front of me: four cackling Howyas who apparently hadn’t been out of The Big Smoke since their school tour to Mosney back in 1935. They had flasks of tea, a big sliced loaf (yes, seriously!) of Brennan’s finest, ham, cheese, and a load of King/Tayto/Hunky Dorys… "Ah jaysis ye can’t bea’ a crisp sangidge, wha'?"

Sitting in the booth across the aisle: three orange Oh My Gawdesses [seriously, do they not wash their hands after slapping on the Fake Bake?!] respledent in Juicy tracksuit bottoms, Uggs and Abercrombie hoodies. Flicking their stylised messy parted-way-too-far-too-the-side hair and rummaging through their D&G luggage, it was "OMG" and "Mom" [what Irish person refers to their mother as "Mom"?!] and "loike" and "I down’t think sew" a go-go.

Despite sitting within inches of the rest of their respective parties, of these people were absolutely roaring at each other at the tops of their voices. It would have been bad enough if they had all just been really loud, they were all, without exception, talking absolute sh*te. In addition, they were like part of a showcase for The World's Most Irritating Laughs™ and then, in response to something genuinely unfunny that one of their cohorts had said, tried to outdo each other with their best fake, unnaturally enthusiastic laughs. Which my hangover and I agreed was needlessly cruel.

Then, just as my head was about to implode, the Americans started to play cards very loudly [apparently, it can be done] and the stag party in the next carriage began lashing out every rebel song and football anthem they had ever heard at the top of their lungs.

And then the train pulled out of Heuston. That's right. They were all just getting warmed up.

Really made me appreciate the hush of my Monday morning commute, though...

Bloom 2007

A few pics of my New Favourite Periennals, Alliums.

Like proper houseowning old people, Himself & myself took ourselves off to Bloom In The Park last Saturday. Well, we had already been to a Residents' Association meeting & spend a good portion of most weekends in B&Q, Woodies, or Telfords; I guess there's just no point fighting it anymore. [God, I'm so old. Better buy something frivolous this evening in an attempt to recapture my yoof.] Anywho, I proceeded to get rather depressed about the wretched state of our own patch of muck and scutch grass while looking at the quite wonderful show gardens but took oodles of photos to document the loveliness of the landscaping and planting nonetheless. See them all here.