Oh, so it's reduced, is it?

So, I'm still working on fashion.  It still makes me want to scream.  The only thing that gets me through my late shift is the food.  You see, Marks and Spencer's is a five minute walk from my work place.  So I can run in at 7:40pm during my break and grab all the super discounted stuff before it closes for the day.

How can you not love this little guy on your sandwich packaging?

They start reducing things that have reached their sell by date and need to go.  So on some nights you can find little cups of delicious trifle for only 10p.  Or a loaf of walnut bread for only 10p.  Or a nice sandwich, that is normally more than I want to pay for it, that is suddenly super cheap.  Or an entire cheesecake for only 50p.  Let's just say I live for dessert.  I grab the cookies, donuts, trifles and chocolate that goes on sale, as well as some of the amazing bread.  Then I sit at work soothing myself with junk food while I carry on with my loathsome tasks.

Why yes, I would like a tiny butler to serve me my pre-packaged sandwich.  Thanks.

So, last night I found milk chocolate Belgian mousse and donuts reduced just for me.  I also found some cream for 10p, some pineapple for 10p, some reduced bread and an interesting flavour of yogurt for only 10p.  This yogurt claimed to be luxury yogurt.  It was Gooseberry and Elderflower Luxury Yogurt.  It was actually pretty good though I don't think it was quite the "essence of warm summer days".  It had little bits in it, and even though I normally hate texture in my yogurt I still liked this.  It was very good, maybe even luxurious.

Luxury yogurt is indeed luxurious.

My dinner after shift was a red onion and Gruyere focaccia bread that was really good, and you guessed it, only 10p.  Then I finished dinner with some donuts.  Maybe I can't hate my job too much. 

Fashion and the Beast

This month at work I am working on a fashion client, which means that so far every day this month I have been coming home angry and frustrated with the world.  So, it is time for me to write a serious post (serious because I've eaten enough chocolate to stop being insanely angry).  I work on a lot of different clients but not even dealing with medical negligence and brain injuries makes me this depressed.  Why am I so upset by working on fashion? 

It is because people who work with and write about fashion often bring a lot of societies deepest darkest issues with them to the topic and air these issues on their blogs and in their articles.  They talk about or simply, parade their views on issues involving beauty, health, weight loss and all the things tied up in the extremely delicate matter of body image.  Then they stomp all over these delicate issues with their stiletto heels.  And may I say I have never gotten so angry so fast as when I read these blogs and articles?  It is not because I don't have a sense of style.  I have my own particular sense of style, and although it does not always match current trends it does suit me.

What makes me angry is that so many of these fashion bloggers are fifteen year old girls who care for nothing but fashion and beauty.  You see pictures of them in beautiful historic cities with culture and life to absorb and enjoy, but these girls only talk about the sunglasses or shoes they were wearing that day.  Clothes are important, yes.  Wearing shoes that you think are cute and comfortable to walk in is also important.  Nobody wants to feel out of place or frumpy while they travel through amazing and beautiful cities.  But there is more to the place than simply what outfit you selected that day.

Select the outfit and then stop worrying about it, go enjoy the culture of the place.  I'm not saying you have to spend all of your time in museums, though I personally think you should do at least some of them.  I am saying that you should enjoy the sites, the food, and the people in a place rather than worrying about having your perfectly posed picture taken in front of every place that could possibly highlight your trendy sunglasses and shiny bracelets. 

Seeing thousands of photos of you posing for a camera rather than enjoying the amazing place you have the great fortune to be visiting is enough to annoy me on the best of days.  But these fashion bloggers do not stop there.  They continue to try my patience with negative messages about body image.  Entire blogs are entitled skinny something or other, and go on about how you can eat less, exercise more and become super skinny.  Recently though the trend is becoming more subtle and even scarier than simply glorifying thinness.

There have been too many people crying out for positive body image and healthy ideas about beauty and bodies.  So now the trend is to talk about getting fit.  The scary thing about this is that it cloaks these negative messages in a language of fitness that is hard to argue with.  Should we strive to be fit?  Yes.  Being healthy, eating good foods, and exercising are good things.  Yet, the images and slogans that go with this trend of fitspiration are hardly promoting healthy attitudes.  Just because the image has a person wearing a sports bra does not mean that the slogan "You are entirely up to you, make your body, make you life, make yourself" or "don't eat anything today that you'll regret tomorrow" isn't a horrible message.  Messages that do more harm than good.  You can check out an amazing article about it at Beauty Redefined.

The problem is there is always an element of truth to these slogans.  Yes, you should be strong and fit so that you can get out and do the things you love.  If you want to climb mountains, or go for a jog to feel the fresh air on your face and the grass beneath your feet, you should be able to do that without falling apart.  A little bit of fitness is good for everyone.  It keeps you healthy longer and will help you lead a better life without health issues down the road.  However, messages telling you that you can and should control your body to make it look a certain way do not contribute to health they rather promote unhealthy ideas about body images that lead to a host of eating disorders and self acceptance issues.  Every woman I have ever met, and even some men, have issues with accepting themselves.  This latest trend of fitspiration makes it worse.  Because now, not only do you need to be thin, you also need to have a six-pack and the legs of a marathon runner to be good enough.

I say we have it all backwards.  We should exercise to make sure we are healthy enough to do the things we love.  Exercise itself should not be the goal.  If you spend your entire life in a gym trying to reach some unattainable ideal then you are not living.  You should be able to eat a cookie without feeling guilty.  Hell, eat five cookies and enjoy your life.  Think about how lucky you are that you have the ability to buy food, including chocolate, and enjoy it.  Wear clothes and things that you like.  Not things that twenty other fashion bloggers posted yesterday and claim are beautiful.  Do you like it?  Then wear it.

And remember that clothes are made to go on you, because you are beautiful and the right clothes only serve to show others how gorgeous you are just the way you are.  You are not a hanger for the clothes.  Do not go about thinking that you need to get thinner or more fit to wear a certain thing.  The clothes are meant to be made for you, rather than you forcing yourself to change for the clothes.  That is madness.  Remember that everyone struggles to find clothes that fit sometimes.  We are all completely unique individuals and the stores that you walk into will not always have things that fit you right.  My best friend and I have always had trouble buying jeans (you can check out her amazing post on this subject at It Is All My Doing).  This doesn't mean that we are the problem.  It means that they are simply not prepared to handle the beauty of our unique curves.  And the same goes for you.  You are allowed to pursue fitness in a healthy way and eat cookies at the same time.  But don't forget that your beauty is not determined by a number on a scale, or the perfect six-pack, or the designer clothes you wear. 

So, if you haven't eaten some chocolate today then join me in eating a cookie.  Or two.  Or three.  Let your hair down and please stop worrying about your make-up for a minute.  And enjoy your life.

Rex sine Terra: King without a land

I am a king. Yes a king.  Rex sine terra, or a king without a land, in the way that Medieval Spain had men with the title dux sine terra.  The title came with certain status and authority.  It made you a duke, gave you certain prestige and acknowledged your standing in society.  But it did not come with land.  It wasn't a landed title based on the holding of certain castles or estates.  It was a title without land.  You were a duke without land.  And in this way I am a king without land.

A castle means safety; an arrow readiness for battle; a lion dauntless courage.  Red signifies military strength and magnanimity; blue truth and loyalty; purple royal majesty; silver peace and sincerity.

Now this doesn't mean that you cannot have land, authority and power.  It just means your title doesn't guarantee it.  If you were a duke without land in Medieval Spain, you only controlled your household and whatever estates you owned before the title.  Duke just came along as a bonus.  As for me, I am a king, but I did not inherit a kingdom with this title.  I have no land of my own complete with subjects.  But this does not mean I do not have power.

First and most importantly I rule myself.  I have adopted the motto "qui vicit, qui se vicit", or he conquers who conquers himself.  I believe this to be true.  A great many things can be done with self-control and determination.  The sixteenth century poet and satirist, Pietro Aretino, had this to say about the subject of self rule: "I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself."  In my personal experience self rule is not only the most important thing for personal growth, it is also what paves the way to other successes. 

Does this mean that everyone is a king?  Certainly not.  One must have at least a modicum of self-control to vie for the title.  If you sit down and think about it you may be surprised at how few of the people you know actually exhibit self-control and the ability to rule themselves.  Think especially of those bad decisions you try to persuade your friends not to make.  Are they motivated by fleeting desires and lack of self-control?

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to actually look at the definition of rule now.  According to the dictionary, to rule is defined thusly: to control or direct; exercise dominating power, authority, or influence over; govern: to rule the empire with severity.

If rule can be defined as just having influence over, and let's face it some kings barely had that, then I rule all sorts of things.  I rule not only myself but also all of my possessions.  Due to the fact that I believe technological devices are magic I cannot claim to control them, but I certainly have a dominating influence over them.  (Ok, at least on most days.)  You may recall my mad ideas about the workings of flash drives.  Well, I own two of them with their attendant cities of miniature scribes and I rule their actions and inhabitants.  As far as influence goes I can reasonably say I have influence over my family and friends.  Who doesn't?  So in a small way I rule them too.

Actually my friends are the reason I'm a king in the first place.  My senior year of university my friends helped me build a cardboard castle in my dorm room.  That is really a story all of its own but that is the reason I am king.  Every castle must have a king, right?  Why didn't I just name myself queen of the castle, being that I am in fact a woman?  Well, I'll get to that in a second.  However, living in a castle demanded a power structure.  I knighted my friends, gave them titles and power.  Even before I became a self-proclaimed king I settled quarrels between them to the best of my ability.  After I became a king I naturally waged wars against enemies who threatened peace in our kingdom.  I made royal declarations and of course conducted battles with foam swords and cardboard shields.  

So, why not a queen?  Think about the history of women and power.  If you think of truly powerful rulers you tend to think of men.  Alexander the Great, Caesar, Henry VIII, Genghis Khan, Napoleon.  Do you think of Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great, or Cleopatra?  No, usually not.  Not to mention that many of history's powerful women only wielded power through men.  Often women came to power as regents for their young sons.  Catherine the Great only gained power by overthrowing her husband and having love affairs with powerful men in the kingdom.  Other women had to use their femininity as their strongest asset in politics.  Cleopatra kept power and influenced politics by making alliances, or romances, with powerful Roman rulers like Caesar and Marc Antony.  Elizabeth I was probably the first monarch to rule in her own right but she had to do so by constantly using her possible marriage as a bargaining chip.  She never married and one has to suspect that this was at least partly because her most powerful tool was dangling the hope of possible alliance with her into various political situations.

The lion in Leeds that greets me at my bus stop.  I like to think it is a royal lion.

So, the only real way to rule in your own right without having to use your marriage as a bargaining tool for power is to be a king.  If you are a queen your property goes to your husband when you are married and he controls it.  A king doesn't lose control by marrying.  A king doesn't rule only as long as his son is in his minority.  Historically, a king has more inherent power, authority and respect than a queen.  I didn't want my kingly status to depend on my personal choices of marriage and alliance.  I wanted to remain powerful and retain my freedom, and keep my cardboard castle to myself.  So I declared myself a king, claiming the position, the power, and the freedom that comes with such a title.  And I stubbornly defend this choice with anyone who argues.

Besides I wanted to be able to wear the color of royalty officially.  Purple was the colour of Roman emperors, kings and powerful men in ancient times.  The Roman Emperor Aurelian wouldn't let his wife buy a purple shawl because it cost its weight in gold.  It was expensive, it was a status symbol and it was highly regulated.  Sumptuary laws made it available only to certain classes of people even in the Tudor age of England.  So, I want to be ready just in case the old sumptuary laws keeping purple for the royalty come back in fashion.  Now that I've made myself a king I can wear what I like.  And more often than not I choose purple for my kingly raiment.

Polygonal Melodrama

Some people have the great misfortune to be plagued by people.  Yes people.  Maybe I'm just a misanthrope, that is still up for debate, but it seems to me that people have an alarming tendency to behave like weeds.  They pop up everywhere in vast numbers and there is almost nothing you can do to prevent them from turning up when and where you do not want them.  The problem with weeds is that they seem to be unhappy with simply growing in your garden.  They seem to like coming equipped with spines and thorns to make your life miserable while they slowly choke your beloved plants (cauliflowers, roses, what have you) to death, much the way people pop up with their unwanted drama and plague you with it mercilessly, slowly strangling all joy and happiness in your life.

Ok, fine, maybe I am a misanthrope.  If you dealt with the people I deal with, you might be too.  Don't get me wrong, I do like some people, for instance my housemate.  She brought me an adorable cauliflower cake from a tea shop the other day.  Relax, it's shaped like a cauliflower, not actually made from cauliflowers.  That would be the most rubbish cake ever invented, but I digress.

Cauliflower Cake from Betty's tea shop. Adorable, no?

So there are a handful of people I find acceptable.  The rest I'm rather tired of.  Whether you are a magnet for dysfunctional individuals, or you simply find yourself in the middle of a ridiculous amount of drama, you know what it is like to be plagued by people.  Much to my dismay I have occasionally found myself in the middle of a whorl of drama, either my own or someone else's, that I somehow managed to stumble into.  For several years now I have also had the great distinction of being a dysfunction magnet.  Sometimes the drama and dysfunction runs so deep that even years of study could not uproot it or untangle it.  So don't try.  Yes, I am advocating that you join me in giving up on worrying and contemplating.  The only solution to this sort of problem is chocolate.  Or cake, that works pretty well too.

So stop trying to figure out if you are involved in a love triangle, a love square, a love pentagram, a swirling vortex of drama or any other type or configuration of polygonal melodrama.  Don't even begin to try to understand it, or fix it.  Do not bring in any other verbs to deal with it.  Save your brain the trouble.  Break out some cake and enjoy life. 

Don't try to untangle things.  Trust me it's not worth the effort.  Just cut yourself loose from the snaring knots of strife.  Admit defeat.  Raise the white flag and declare that you are through trying to decipher the meaning behind the insanity.  If anyone or anything tries to get in the way of your timely retreat, don't just throw in the towel, throw it at their head.  Then sit down, put your feet up and eat some cake, preferably chocolate, but I'll let you decide that one. 

After all, you've just won the greatest victory of all.  Freedom.

Mad Images

I'm in a weird mood today.  Yes even weirder than usual.  So, I'm going to leave you with a few bizarre and wonderful images I've collected recently. These images not only suit my strange sense of humour, and my weird mood, they also serve to illustrate just how mad the whole world is.

Mr. Monk a.k.a. Frangelico

I was not the person who decided to make this particular alcoholic beverage in a monk shaped bottle with a rope wrapped around his waist and all its lettering done in gothic scripts.  (Of course if I was consulted I would have approved very heartily of this plan).  I did, however, give him a hat and dub him Mr. Monk.  I think he must be a Franciscan and therefore fantastic.

Cage-frame men in a workshop

These strange cage-frame men were in a workshop I happened to pass by one day after work.  It is hard to tell with all the glare through the windows, but these cage-frame men are standing by big tools in some sort of machine shop.  They look like they are about to come to life, switch on various tools and carry on working on their latest projects.

Barbara Banana - Fruit Box Security Officer

Before leaving work for the day a few of the girls giggled while they crafted this addition to the fruit box.  According to the inscription written on a post-it note this is Barbara Banana the Fruit Box Security Officer.  Apparently she is guarding the granny smiths because somebody loves them.  But it seems to be a part of her role to also guard pears and protect strawberry children too.  Her weapon of enforcement, and of course a natural choice for security, is a spoon.  Her uniform appears to include a night-cap or strange pointy hat.  Maybe it's the long nose, maybe it's the crookedy teeth, or maybe it's the allusion to witches with her pointy hat, but I think this Barbara can really only be described as a crone, albeit a slightly amusing and charming one.

Apparently I am not a good pirate, for I do not know how to plunder.  Therefore I sadly, must work.  Some days plundering just sounds so much more appealing.  Ah well.

So there you have it a collection of some strange images and things I've seen of late.

E is no longer just a letter?

rEading cat - Photo Source: Flickr by SuziJane

Today at work I saw a title that said e is for escape.  The article itself was talking about ebooks for the elderly.  However, it made me think E scape.  Huh, a technological escape.  Suddenly my mad brain took this idea and ran with it.  The letter e in front of things means some sort of technological version of them.  Ebooks, and emuseums are somehow online and accessible through new technological means.  If the letter e stands for technology then I decided all sorts of other words needed to be rethought.  For instance, a rEunion is where people are rEunited by the internet or facebook after a period of time.  Come to think of it, rEthought itself needs to be rethought.  REthought could mean coming to your conclusions based on things you have read on line.  The word rElate can mean to email a friend a story, or to form a connection or bond with someone online, (e.g. She could rElate to the blogger's love of ice cream).  To rEgift would be some form of sharing online, perhaps on facebook or twitter.  To rElax would be to find peace in online activities.  To dEstroy can be to ruin something online.  To bEsiEge can be to attack something online, probably with nasty comments (it gets two E's because besieging things in real life requires you to surround them and it is a rather intense process involving numbers and deserving of two E's).  But you could probably Evade capture by simply going offline.

On second thought, I don't think Escape is a technological escape.  I think Escape is a technological landscape.  A long row of computers could be considered an Escape though.  Or maybe a picture of the components of a computer.  Escapism could become a new art form.  It would be the next stage beyond post-modern.  It would be so post-modernly modern it could almost be modern.  See (which would become sEE, would be to view images online, and considering the eye-popping implications of two capitalized E's they are no doubt shocking ones).  Anyhow, my sentence got derailed by that tangent.  This is what happens when you start replacing whole words with letters and using letters to mean whole words.  E, is no longer just a letter which can only lead to more confusion in the future.  E is the most used letter in the English language if I am not mistaken.

Think about it.  Words like Elucidate (explaining things online) may be just as good as elucidating face to face.  But consider words like Eat and Elope.  Eating and Eloping are not in any way enhanced by an online experience.  These words are physical and their enjoyment is in the real physical world.  No E anything can rEplace that.  And what about sEcret.  There are no secrets online.  This all brings new meaning to the word Evil.  Is technology of the devil or is it simply malicious?  I'm not sure.  But this just brings me back to my rants about technology ruining the world and so forth.  Before I go on at length about this I will go to bed.

By the way, bEfore, now means procrastinating online when you should be doing other things like chores, or sleeping.  What other E words can you think of?  Ok, I'm really going now, you must be rElieved.

A Sunday Drive to Hebden Bridge

Today was entirely too lovely to be spent indoors.  So, although I had slept but a scant few hours I knew I needed to go ahead with the plans to hike with friends.  Why, you may ask, had I not slept much?  I had been working incredibly hard on an application for a job.  This is no ordinary job.  This job is so unusual, so specific, and so remarkable that it must have been made for me.  This job is to conserve, repair and generally work with model ships in bottles.  If I were to get it I would work at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, under an organic conservator and help do tiny repairs to ships in bottles.  I cannot think of a more random or delightful job to do.   I love ships in bottles.  I make miniature dollhouse furniture etc. in my spare time.  I studied the history and science and sailing at university and learned how to calculate longitude.  Yeah, that's right.  So, because I cannot think of a more amazing job and because I am randomly the most perfectly suited person for this job I spent hours agonizing over every detail of my resume and cover letter.  Eventually I admitted defeat, sent the application in its imperfect state and went to bed far too late.

Why did I need to go on this hike today?  Well for one thing, I told them I was going.  I am a person of my word.  If I say something I mean it and if I tell you I will do something I will.  For another thing, the sun was actually shining.  In case you do not know or cannot appreciate the significance of this I will explain.  I live in the UK.  This means that the sun NEVER shines.  Ok, to be fair it shines three days a year.  But this is simply not enough days in the year for me to fulfill my sunlight quota and replenish my vitamin D levels.  I was born on the West coast of the USA and I need my sunlight.  Needless to say I needed to savor the rare and delicious sunshine on this fine day.

The Hole in the Wall: Pubmaster.  I just loved this lantern.

Reluctantly and determinedly I got up way too early and got ready to go.  We were going to Hebden Bridge a cute little town on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.  The drive was leisurely as we wound our way past idyllic landscapes made even more perfect by the delicious sunlight pouring down on them. Hebden Bridge was delightful.  We had a nice lunch outside in a park.  We strolled along the river.  We admired architectural details, ducks, and dogs.

Tiny hillside cemetery on the way up the hill.

We climbed a small hill to go explore the little town of Heptonstall.  It was adorable as well.  It had its own tiny museum, the place where Sylvia Plath was buried, and a fascinating church ruin.  The old medieval church ruin sits majestically at the top of the hill nestled amongst the gravestones of the long dead.  Just at the other end of the small cemetery in the same churchyard is the newer larger church that is still used.  The ruined medieval church began its life in the 1200's and its stones bore witness to the many changes it saw during its lifetime.  The roofline was clearly altered, raised to match the new nave that was added.  The arches and windows were updated to be a bit more gothic.  Many churches have changes made to them through the centuries, but what made this church unique was the fact that it had two naves side by side.  When the town was prospering and growing in the sixteenth century the church was made larger to accommodate the growth of the town.  The walls and aisles were not just widened, an entire second nave with a new north aisle was added alongside the first.  I have never seen a church with two naves like that before.  It was fascinating to think about and gorgeous to behold.

The flowers growing among the stones mark the division between the two naves of this church. 

In case this was not evidence enough for you that this was a fascinating church I have another oddity for you.  The south entryway into the church seems to have been roofed with old gravestones.  I'm not sure at what point in history that decision was made, but I suppose they were a handy material as there are lots of them lying about the church yard.

Note the writing on the gravestones now acting as roofing material.

In the newer cemetery we did not find Sylvia Plath's grave.  The weeds were quite troublesome to wade through in much of the cemetery and we eventually gave up our search. I did see a headstone with RIP on it though.  I don't believe I've ever seen one outside of cartoons.

We walked back down the hill climbing on a few nice boulders on the way down.  We sang some songs about rocks, mostly meant to be about rock and roll, but we giggled anyway.  Then we ended our day back along the river in Hebden Bridge eating ice cream.  It was a lovely way to soak up some sunshine.  If my luck holds I may read in the sunshine tomorrow.

Sunset over Leeds